Helping A Friend Step Away From The Keyboard: A Guide
IT’S hard when a friend’s addiction gets so bad that you have to intervene, whether it’s drug abuse, alcohol issues, gambling, or being a ‘very online person’. But rest assured, even if your internet-obsessed pals don’t thank you for your intervention straight away, they will in the long run.
Here’s a quick guide to help you know when’s the time to step in and pry them away from the keyboard, their phone, and the internet in general:
1) They keep talking about shit that you have no clue about, featuring people you’ve never heard of
Day-to-day interactions online may seem very important to the people that are involved, but once you try and explain that to a third party, it sounds like the ravings of a mad man.
If your friend approaches you talking about how ‘username @harryfontaine375 on Twitter (who may or may not be username Hfontaine375 on Instagram who has also been talking shit) subtweeted you in a quote reply to a dig from username @michaelDwiggins in regards to an interaction they had in December of last year’, you should take this as a sign that your friend has gone over to the bad place and needs to put their phone down.
2) They refer to themselves as a ‘tech bro’
Or leads descriptions of themselves with tech-heavy lingo that does not describe their personalities in the slightest. For example, if the first thing they’ve written on their Twitter bio is ‘Ethereum’, you can be assured that they’ve drank a little bit too much of the silicon KoolAid and they need to be walked back into a world that they can see, hear and touch.
Assure them that ‘tech bros’ are going to be the most absolutely useless people in the world after the inevitable nuclear holocaust, no matter how many Ted Talks they host on the future of always-on connectivity or some bullshit.
3) They’re ‘going live at four with evidence and receipts’ on their FB live to three people, two of whom are Wish.com bots
Okay pal, time to put the phone away for a while, you’re just being a dickhead now, let’s get you out in the sunshine in a place with no reception, let you get a nice digital detox, there’s the good lad.