A story by Devi McCallion / @dei_genetrix

written on twitter on 2021-01-09

All times are UTC+2.

[devi's current profile pic]

16:27. Sometimes you have injured hands and feet. It's the only way if you want to live. Who hasn't been injured?

16:31. It's the style, it makes you look a little bit badass. No one messes with a badass. I wanted to look like a badass. I wanted to feel safe.

16:33. You made yourself hard and sharp. Like a porcupine. So no one could touch you.

16:34. I felt all alone. I earned that money by crying.

16:47. I really wanted to style my hair, in a way to attract people. To get people to talk to me. To get them want to be my friend. Let them know you are special. Even if it was to yell at you, someone was speaking to you.

16:48. It didn't matter, even if it was to argue. At least someone was arguing with me.

16:50. On the holidays I'd go to the tourist spots, where the people are, and pose. Everyone was paying attention. Even tho it wasn't positive attention. But they saw you.

16:53. From the time I was young life was difficult. It was very lonely. When I was especially lonely it felt like I needed other people to pay attention to me all the time. Everyone who did that style was a little bit injured in some way.

16:55. Who's going to notice and care for a normal person? It was your strange appearance that made them care. People come over and ask "Did something bad happen to you?"

16:57. In the job inspection, only standard bodies get in.

17:05. When ur working in a factory too long, it's a strange feeling. Then, inside your head all you hear is the machine. It's stuck in your head. It goes on and on and on. If you don't find a way to turn it off, and some people never find a way to turn it off, life becomes meaningless.

17:07. When you're off work, you can't hear anything, just the machine ringing in your ears.

17:07. An hour or two later, you can finally hear something else.

17:09. So in the end I just endured. Slowly but surely I learned to forget that bitterness

17:13. You don't know what's outside. You don't know anything. Any free time you spend on your phone. You can join a chat group, even if it's just to vent. Even if I never went, I could listen in. It felt good. Fantasizing, hallucinating at the idea of the warmest chat groups.

17:17. They were free, they were individuals. They were different from my parents. They could do what they wanted. They were free. As I got to know them I realized my life was going to change. My life is mine to live. Even if I was wrong.

17:22. We'd all hold hands. After one circuit of the club we'd go to the bathroom and use the mirrors. We'd say "I've got to fix my hair"

17:27. When your heart hurts more than your body, you can't...

17:33. When normal people get shaken up over the potential of a reality that's already being inflicted being inflicted harshly and with vigilence against SWs for years now... It's like well you didn't do anything then, they were the trial and you're the full version.

17:45. I never worked overtime. Not even when the manager demanded it. Every night we went to the club and I drank until I was drunk. Then we would have heart-to-heart talks. When a friend was sad, we were sad together. Next morning we were good to go back to work.

18:02. I'd do phone videos and I didn't recognize myself, because I felt like I was someone else. A different personality. I felt my entire body was different. I would tremble. I didn't know how other ppl thought about it. But for me, it worked for me.

18:03. For someone like me who didn't have friends, I needed some way of having fun. So it was a good thing.

18:10. When you stay here it feels like you won't last for long.

18:11. What are you here for? Are you here to look at the tall buildings? So I raise my head to look at a high-rise, haahaa

18:13. No one talked about dreams, no one mentioned them.

18:13. If you mentioned dreams it would be a joke

18:17. Crying Dream, An Zi Xuan, Cruel Blood and so on.

18:20. You could fight however, but "don't mess with my hair", that was a hard rule

18:21. In real life there was so much you couldn't say. But online you could say whatever you wanted. Sometimes you'd go to an internet cafe and pay for the whole night. You might end up chatting all night.

18:22. The feeling I had from hanging out with them online was they became brothers and sisters.

18:24. Everyone had feelings that we were the same kind. Everyone else thought that we weren't normal. But we could persevere because we were a family.

18:26. I would say I believed in it. It was something I couldn't do without. It was a belief. It supported me.

18:30. Working in a factory ten years with no chance of advancement. Just like everyone. But online I had a chance of advancing. First, I was already in a different space. A kind of refuge, garden of Eden. Even thought it was virtual. The virtual me was happy there.

18:35. We had no money so all we could do was go sit in the park by the lake. We had crappy cellphones that played more static than music all night.

18:42. We lived in a small apartment. It was dark all the time there. Pitch black. You had to use the lights 24 hours a day. I thought life was meaningless.

18:50. In 2012 the fake kids took over the bbs, silencing the original kids. They posted images and videos that defamed them. These videos were widely disseminated. Information shared thru prejudice reports. Some joined bbs by false pretense, gained control over bbs then dissolved them.

18:50. By 2013 the online groups were dissolved.

18:51. I don't know why, but it was like suddenly, it was like they had all vanished.

18:54. They had bots that would automatically yell at you. As soon as they caught you they'd start spamming. Automatic spamming. They got control for a second. Just one second was enough. It was a question of speed. If you didn't have a good enough cellphone it jammed your phone.

18:55. It would overheat your phone. It wasn't an isolated event.

18:58. I was looking online for a place that belonged to me. Didn't need your permission. Didn't need your approval. All you had to do was leave me alone. But even this last virtual space was trampled. That's why we had to scatter.

19:13. I used to have this habit. After drinking I'd go up on a rooftop. And stand there. But I never blinked. There was a brick wall and I'd stand on top. Singing. It's actually great. That breeze feels so cool. By the time you feel that feeling, maybe you don't exist anymore.

19:16. I want to be an internet celebrity, earning my living from my webcast... Because... You can't do temporary work your whole life

19:20. For one broadcast, the one with cement, we brought bags of cement powder and poured it on the ground. It got in our noses and our mouths and all over our bodies. We washed it off but our skin wasn't right. It hurt.

19:22. Some people like it. They think you can dance. They think you have humor. They think you are strange. They also see how hard you work. So they send you a gift. The friends who broadcast with me, we split the profits from the broadcast evenly.

19:23. I give small donations. Like around $5 a day. If I feel like it, I give because it's not a lot. Anyway, nobody's got it easy.

19:29. Sometimes we are pushed to the limit to earn gifts. They give us money so we do what they want. Making money is hard. Constantly dancing, constantly high. When we were most popular, people said "check out the monkeys". And they gave us gifts like feeding a monkey a banana.

19:30. They called us lots of things but it didn't matter as long as we were happy.

19:34. At that time when the livestream app was deleting undesirable feeds, we didn't stream for half a month. When we started again no one was watching. We searched on our phones for the livestream ID and we couldn't find it. We couldn't find our names.

19:36. After all the larger feeds were deleted, some of the smaller feeds banded together. There was nothing for the girls. Only guys had a share. Anyway it suddenly dropped off. No one had confidence. It felt like they gave up. Then everything just drifted apart.

19:40. Most of the time it's rural people doing this. Not many city people are involved. City people think what we're doing is corny. Everyone has their own goals.

19:42. You wonder if there is anything else, but there isn't. I realized this was the only choice. But this choice will leave you bored. So you'll have to find something interesting.

19:44. As long as this society exists, people are going to be discarded. Are going to be injured. Are going to be disrespected.

19:47. Anyways, I remember this string of numbers. Really clearly. I felt like if I dialed this number I could get help. All that could help me was this number. When I dialed it, no one answered.

19:49. This string of numbers I remember most clearly. I use it every time I need a password. It's like, it doesn't matter if it's an app or software or a bank card. This number is always my pin number. Because it's the only number I can remember.

20:14. The wind will blow or it wont, the stars come out or they dont


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