During the holidays, I received a card from my tallented writer-performer friend, Joe Mallon. We “met” on a virtual stage in Chicago back when live theaters were shut down—yes, during the COVID era, when sweatpants were formalwear and everyone learned how to unmute.
When everything closed, I wandered into online stages and discovered so many generous, strange, and wonderful people. Even after the world reopened, many of us stayed in touch. Joe is one of them. We still check in on each other when disasters or scary news hit each other’s cities, just to make sure the other one is okay.
In his card, he reminisced—listing stories of mine he’d heard years ago.
While reading it, something clicked.
Wow. I am so fed up with social media.
So fed up.
There was a time when scrolling felt magical.
“No way.”
“Did that really happen?”
The internet used to feel like a parade of little miracles.
It’s not AI—it’s just a really good illusion!
Now it feels like a police lineup.
Before reacting to anything, the brain has to interrogate it:
Is this AI?
Is this rage bait?
Is this someone pretending to cry for engagement?
(Rage bait, by the way, is content engineered to make people mad enough to share it. It’s emotional clickbait. Like regular clickbait, but with feelings.)
It’s exhausting. Not because the stories are intense—but because so many of them might not even be real.
Do you remember the famous Greater Pittsburgh bank robberies in 1995? Two men believed that rubbing lemon juice on their faces would make them invisible to security cameras—like invisible ink. So they walked into a bank with bare faces, robbed it, and were immediately arrested.
That story is ridiculous.
It is also completely true.
But if it showed up in a feed today? It would be dismissed in half a second.
“Fake.”
“AI.”
“Staged.”
That’s the tragedy of the moment: reality has lost its credibility.
And it’s not that there’s more absurdity now. There’s just more fabrication pretending to be absurdity. So instead of being curious, we’re suspicious. Instead of being moved, we’re tired.
Personally, there’s no appetite left for sorting it out. No desire to fact-check whether someone’s trauma, outrage, or miracle was manufactured for clicks. The cost is too high. Time. Attention. Actual emotion.
So the filter has become brutal and simple:
real people, in real rooms.
Friends.
Performers.
Someone sweating under stage lights.
Someone forgetting a line.
Someone telling a story that can’t be generated, because it wobbles a little.
That’s where the nervous system relaxes again.
That’s where the truth still lives.
Tasting party to support a local restaurant, La Serenata Canita in WLA
And that’s why more human connection doesn’t feel like a luxury anymore.
It feels like survival.
So this month, try something different.
Go to a live show—standup, storytelling, music, whatever calls to you.
Have coffee with a friend.
Write a real card. A real letter. Something you have to touch.
Let’s have some real, human connection.
So true, this is a great reality check for me to reconnect and meet up in person with friends and family. Also honored to be in a picture in this article. Thank you!
I am SO glad you’re in that photo, too! You are the human equivalent of a ‘real room’ vibe. Thank you for being one of those people I never have to ‘fact-check’ for authenticity.