Sociable

by Rebecca Harrington

  After about ten minutes, J.W. came back. He was holding a bulky and obscurely dirty Apple computer, which he laid out in front of Elinor.

  “Okay, here,” said J.W.

  “Thanks,” said Elinor. “So, what should I do exactly—”

  “I’ll let you know in a minute,” said J.W. “Right now, I’ve got a lot of stuff on my plate with partnerships.”

  “Okay! Just let me know,” said Elinor. J.W. sighed and went into a conference room with glass walls. Elinor could see him in there. He was staring at his computer but not typing on it.

  Elinor opened her computer and decided she would read everything on the Journalism.ly, industriously, until J.W. came back. For example, right now, the lead story was something called “The Real Problem I Have with Democracy,” next to a picture of an empty Senate building on a cloudy day. If you clicked on the picture of the empty Senate building, you could read that article. Another headline was “Why the Republicans Are Wrong About Solar Power,” next to a picture of the sun. If you clicked on the sun you could read a four-hundred-word piece about solar power that started with the sentence “There is a lot of stupidity about Solar Power out there, but Rep. Jim Thomson (R-CO) epitomizes exactly the kind of regressive thinking that no one can stand.” Next to that was a list called “10 Cute Things That Make Adele Your Best Friend.”

  After Elinor finished reading all the Journalism.ly, she started Googling the company. Elinor found a recent article about Journalism.ly in Memo Points Daily almost immediately (“What Journalism.ly Needs to Do in the Online World [And What It’s Not Doing”]). The thrust of the article was that Journalism.ly claimed to disrupt journalism, but that no one read it ever. “Sean Patterson’s Journalism.ly made a lot of promises and didn’t deliver. Instead of disrupting the space, it’s an unmitigated flop.”

  Elinor felt a numbness that settled in her throat when she finished the article. Was it true? Was she working at a terrible place? Did Mike think thoughts like that? But Journalism.ly looked almost exactly like Memo Points Daily, which looked exactly like BuzzFeed, which looked exactly like something called TheBuster.com, which looked exactly like NewYorker.com. They all had a mix of opinion pieces, lists, and dutifully reported news, like a Facebook feed. How was there even a hierarchy of any kind? Maybe Journalism.ly had slightly more lists than most of the others—but was that so bad?

  At some point, she stumbled on an article from 2012 called “Is This Man Hacking Journalism?” accompanied by a picture of Sean Patterson, the CEO of the Journalism.ly, holding a newspaper and ripping it in two and then standing on newspapers that were crumpled up on the floor. Sean had large eyes with protrudent bottom lids. He had curly, thinning hair that was flecked with gray. He was wearing a T-shirt and Converse sneakers. Under the picture it read: “Journalism is broken, we need a new model.”

  Elinor read the article and she learned some useful information. Sean’s father knew a lot of journalists. (As a child, Sean had played catch with Bob Woodward.) At some point, Sean became a venture capitalist in Silicon Valley and then he realized that the old model for journalism doesn’t work anymore.

  “No disrespect to my dad or anything,” Sean said in the article. “I just don’t think telling people what to think works anymore. I think they make their minds up for themselves. That being said, great journalism never goes out of style—which is why we have some accomplished investigative reporters working alongside new-media innovators. That’s the special mix that we’re bringing. You can be smart and stupid at the same time.” Elinor wondered if J.W. was an accomplished investigative reporter. He was the only old man here, so it was probably so. The thought filled her with the shamefaced conviction that she had not treated him with enough deference.

  She decided to email that article to Mike with the subject line “Cool!”

  It was now 1:00 p.m. J.W. was still sitting in the conference room and staring at his computer but not typing. Was there something she should be doing that she wasn’t? Should she get up and talk to J.W. even though he said he was going to come back and talk to her? She could get lunch, but what if she was called to do something during lunch? There seemed nothing to do but introduce herself to her seatmate. Elinor tapped the girl next to her on the arm.

  “Hey,” Elinor said. The girl looked a little startled, but took off her headphones and placed them on her neck. The headphones were giant white conical spheres. The girl had pointy ears, messy hair, and makeup all over her eyes.

  “Hi,” said the girl, very quietly. “Sorry, I’m just on Adderall. I was zoning out. What’s up?” The room was extremely quiet. No one else was speaking. There was only the tapping of keys, pittering in the background like a gentle drizzle.

  “Hey, so, no worries, sorry to bother you.” Elinor was embarrassed now at the loud and hollow sound of her voice. “But I’m new here. My name’s Elinor.”

  “Hey,” said the girl. She held out her hand. “Oh my god, I’m like, shaking a little. Do you see that? Look at my hand. I’m Nicole.”

  “When did you start working here?”

  “Like, a couple of months ago.”

  “Cool! Do you like it?”

  “It’s stressful.” Nicole got pinged on chat; it echoed faintly through her headphones. Her chat box changed from blue to red.

  “Oh, fuck this bitch,” said Nicole.

  “What?” said Elinor.

  “She’s saying that my story ‘Cats Explaining Feminism to Me’ is like, too much like this story she’s doing.”

  “What?”

  “Ugh. What a bitch. It’s so not.”

  “Wow,” said Elinor.

  “I know, right,” said Nicole, who didn’t look up from her screen. She was still typing into her chat box.

  “I’m trying to figure out what to do today, actually.”

  “Has J.W. told you?”

  “Not yet,” said Elinor.

  “That sucks,” said Nicole. “Well, what’s your name? Let me add you on Insta and stuff. Nice to meet you.” Once she got all of Elinor’s information (her full name, her Instagram, her Snapchat, her Yik Yak, her Ask.fm), she put her headphones back on.

  Elinor went back to looking at her computer screen. She tried to find Sean Patterson on Facebook and realized that there were a lot of Sean Pattersons. At some point, during the progress of Elinor’s reading, Peter walked to the front of the room, his hands clasped behind his neck. Elinor didn’t notice Peter was standing there until he cleared his throat loudly.

  “Attention, everyone. Please stop what you’re doing. Sean is coming in. There’s an all-hands meeting in two minutes. I think he’s bringing cake.” Peter smiled as if he had made a joke. No one looked up or laughed or acknowledged what he’d said. Then he walked quickly into the kitchen. Nicole made a face and took off her headphones.

  “Oh god no.” She must have been listening through the headphones. Were the headphones even playing music?

  “Why no?” said Elinor.

  “I hate these,” said Nicole. “I actually really have a lot to do today and I had the shittiest night last night, like the fucking worst night of my fucking life.”

  Elinor heard some vague commotion behind her, so she turned around. J.W. had emerged, bleary-eyed, from his conference room, and was shaking hands with a man in a cashmere sweater and jeans. It was Sean Patterson.

  Sean Patterson’s hair was slightly grayer than it looked in the picture, and he was shorter, but more muscular. (He had large and not particularly attractive circular muscles that wrapped around his rib cage. You could see them through the sweater he was wearing.) He wore very dirty sneakers despite his old face. While talking to J.W. he kept patting him on the back. Eventually, he strode up to the front of the room, followed by a ghostly girl holding a cake box.

  “Hello, everyone,” said Sean, who settled himself next to an empty plastic folding table. The pale girl put the cake on the table. “How are you all doing?”

  People mumbled in stilted assent.
Sean had a high but commanding voice that articulated certain words very forcefully.

  “I wanted to call this meeting because, well, I think it’s important for all of us to be on the same page in terms of all the new initiatives we’re bringing on here in the run-up to the election. This is a very, very exciting time at the Journalism.ly,” said Sean. “It’s a big time for change.”

  Sean smiled broadly, showing white, square, capped teeth.

  “Look at this room. We have some of my favorite journalists in this room.” Sean paused. Everyone tittered nervously, not knowing, perhaps, whether this was a joke. “Peter is one of my favorite journalists, Dwight is one of my favorite journalists, and Josh, of course Josh. Let’s give Josh a round of applause for his new piece—‘Despite the Carnival, the Party Decides.’ ”

  Everyone clapped halfheartedly, and an adenoidal twenty-four-year-old with a bald spot took a bow. Elinor saw J.W. looking at the floor, his hands balled into fists.

  “But in order for us to provide some of my favorite writers to the world, we need to concentrate on some revenue-growing activities. And that’s why we really need to concentrate on something I talk a lot about—going viral and adding video! Because I really do think this business will be at some point profitable. I really do. I just think we need to really focus on trying to do that. But at the same time, never sacrificing the great journalism that has made Journalism.ly a guardian for the public sector! I don’t want to make anyone nervous, I just want you guys to know what’s important for the purposes of transparency. And we also have cake, guys, which is pretty sick.”

  Sean gestured to the cake, which was being cut up and laid out on the table by his ghost/assistant. Then he walked purposefully toward J.W. and started talking to him in a low and confidential voice. They eventually wandered toward the conference room, at which point most people in the newsroom wandered up to the front of the room and took cake slices, silently. Elinor got cake too. She helped herself to a large slice and sat back down at her table. Nicole ate her cake with her headphones on.

  Elinor ate all of her cake, which was dry and tasted faintly of lemon even though it was ostensibly vanilla, and wondered about what to do. As J.W. seemed busy for the rest of the day (it was now kind of late), Elinor decided she should probably talk to Peter about what to do. He seemed to be in charge.

  Peter was sitting at the table where the cake had been (now deserted of people; the cake had been moved to an unseen locale). He too was wearing headphones and typing. A narrow slice of cake lay untouched next to his computer. Some crumbs had dribbled onto the paper plate the cake was on, like he had dragged his fork across the cake, almost eaten it, and then decided against it.

  “Peter,” said Elinor.

  “Uh, hi,” said Peter, startled. He took his headphones off, and they clattered on top of his computer keyboard. He sighed like she was interrupting important business, even though Elinor could see all he was doing was chatting into various portals.

  “I’m just wondering if you had any idea what I should be doing? This was my first day and no one has really said what exactly a special viral content editor is—”

  “Well, what do you think you’re supposed to be doing?” Peter leaned back in his chair.

  “I don’t know.” Elinor said this more quickly than she meant to. “No one has told me anything. I’ve been here since nine a.m. and I haven’t seen anything that would tell me what I would be doing.”

  “Well, this position takes a lot of initiative, Elinor. That’s the first aspect of any job. Take initiative.”

  Elinor was torn between a sharp sense of injustice and a deeper fear that perhaps she had not been doing the right thing by continually Googling random topics. Guilt colored her future comments.

  “Well, I didn’t even know what I was doing for sure.”

  “You are replacing Elizabeth,” Peter said, gazing at her in a fixed way. “What I want you to do for the next couple of days, I just want you to get a feel for the site. At the end of the week, I want you to come up with a viral thing that goes viral. Maybe like something bad that happened to you. Or a funny list. You can look up what Elizabeth did. And then just upload it to the site, I’ll email you directions on how to do that. I’ll try to look over it when I can, but don’t feel the need to run everything by me, because this job is about initiative. I do more investigative journalism? I’m writing a piece about how millennials are the first generation to switch jobs a lot and how that’s actually good for them—”

  “Well, that’s not really an investigative journalism piece,” said Elinor. “That’s more like an opinion piece.”

  “No, it’s an investigation piece. I’m calling people, like this psychologist.”

  “But still, you have an opinion. The opinion is that it’s good for them. That’s an opinion piece.”

  “No. Not really. I think that’s actually false objectivity,” said Peter. “Anyway, have any questions on your job?”

  “No,” said Elinor, even though she did. She trudged back to her table.

  She sat down next to Nicole again.

  “So, do you know what your job is?” asked Nicole, without taking off her headphones.

  “Kind of,” said Elinor.

  “That’s so fucked,” said Nicole.

  Elinor stared at her computer screen. The enormity of her task paralyzed her.

  Luckily, Elinor could see a bunch of people getting up and going home. It was about 6:00 p.m. Elinor waited for Peter to get up from his seat, which he did, at 7:30. Then she left out the same door.

  Chapter 5

  Social Media Blackout

  (Unusual since 2010)

  · · ·

  The worst day of Elinor’s life hadn’t seemed like it was going to be the worst day of her life when she woke up that morning. At first, it just seemed vaguely shitty: It was raining a little and only tiny shards of light were coming through the prison bars on the windows of the apartment. Mike was gone when she woke up, but she knew he had to get up early today because he wanted to work on his new story in his #knowyourtrash series. She had run out of coffee and she had only forty-six dollars for the rest of the month after she paid her student loan, so she couldn’t buy any.

  Another thing that Elinor had to do that day was finally come up with a piece of viral content. All week, she had been pottering around the office trying to think about what to write that would go viral, and her uselessness was starting to seem excessive. Every day, on the subway ride into work, she lambasted herself for her lack of ideas. But once at work, she looked at her emails and picked at a small scab on her knuckle between two long hairs. She had already looked up what Elizabeth had done, and it was only one piece (“Why I’m Glad to Be a Spinster in the 21st Century”) and it didn’t seem to be all that helpful. Everyone had seemed far busier than she was, clacking importantly on their keyboards, blinking obtrusively, laughing silently at the end of the day at the messages they’d missed on their phones.

  What did people even like to read? It was so hard. Elinor liked to watch videos of animals, but there were a lot of animal videos on the site every day anyway and she was never fast enough to post them.

  Unfortunately, when she got to work that day, the coffee was even worse than usual, completely grounds and two inches of cloudy water. She brought some back to her seat but couldn’t drink it. And since, Elinor reasoned, it was impossible to work without quality coffee, she went to Dean & DeLuca, even though she didn’t really have money for the extravagance.

  At the counter, she asked for a drip coffee.

  “We don’t have that,” said a woman in a chef’s hat. “Is an Americano okay?”

  “Sure,” said Elinor.

  She waited for her Americano at the coffee bar. It was relatively deserted, so she looked out the window at the people walking by. It had become forbiddingly cold all of a sudden, and the pedestrians seemed cowed. They were uniformly walking with their heads bent and their hands shoved violently in t
heir pockets.

  “Americano,” the woman behind the counter said. Elinor took her cup off the coffee bar and the heat of the liquid burned through the cup and seared her hand. She had forgotten to get a sleeve. She took the cover off the coffee, blew on it, and took a sip. It was still scalding hot, which made her hand move involuntarily and spastically sideways.

  “Shit!” said Elinor. The coffee cup was also too full of liquid. It spilled slightly, damaging the seam of the cup and burning her wrist.

  “Ow, fuck!” But at the very same moment she was swearing loudly, she also got an idea. Everyone drinks coffee. What if she wrote a list of all the things that are just so coffee?

  Elinor ran back to the office. She jumped up the stairs two at a time.

  * * *

  · · ·

  At 6:00 p.m., starving and too nervous to keep sitting, Elinor got up from her chair. She had just finished her list and put it up on the website. It was called “15 Things Only Coffee Lovers Know.” She had tweeted, Facebooked, and Instagrammed it from Journalism.ly’s account, which was what she was supposed to do. She was done for the day. But, as all the quotes about writing did say, it is a vulnerable business, and Elinor felt suddenly exposed. She hoped this piece went viral.

  “Where are you going?” asked Nicole, who looked up at her curiously. Elinor never really ended the day with any type of finality. She usually waited until everyone else left and skulked out behind them, not even putting her coat on until she was far down the stairwell, in case she was asked, midexit, to come back inside.

  “I’m going to my friend’s party.” Sheila was having a party tonight. Elinor didn’t want to go. She just wanted to go back to her basement and watch old sitcom reruns and refresh her computer.

  “Sounds fun. I’m going out for drinks and then maybe to like, this n+1 guy’s house. He’s a nice guy, but all of the guys he hangs out with are kind of terrible. I don’t know why I’m going. I hate books by men.”

  “Ugh. Yeah.”