Unfiltered

by Katrina Cady (Germany)

Making a local connection United Kingdom

According to Instagram, my friend, Alexa, is living the dream - and surely this was why we never had time to talk. Every Christmas we would meet for our annual coffee to catch-up on our lives, but last time something was off. On our last coffee date, as I regaled her with stories of my latest misadventures abroad, Alexa’s eyes remained glued to her smartphone. Occasionally, a ‘hmm’ or ‘huh’ escaped from her lips, but her eyes never met mine. Alexa was fixated on Twitter. She sat there mindlessly scrolling through meaningless tweets from virtual strangers, as her grande soy latte grew tepid and undrinkable. Offended by her lack of interest in me, I vowed that next Christmas I wouldn’t waste my time talking to myself in a dimly lit Starbucks as she tweeted out her every thought, but shared none of them with me. About six months later, though, Alexa sent me an unscheduled text. She had booked a flight to London and was wondering if I wanted to fly in from Germany and meet her. Despite my vow of silence, I agreed. I believed the trip would be different. “She’ll be more present if she’s travelling” I reassured myself as I started fantasizing about all of the things I could do and eat in London. The trip got off to an unpleasant start with dramatic flight delays. I didn’t reach our South Kensington hotel until two in the morning. Alexa was waiting for me on the stone staircase out front when my taxi pulled up. A group of extremely tall men walked by us as I collected my suitcase. “Did you notice how tall those guys were?” I asked. “No,” Alexa huffed. “I decided that I wouldn’t look at them.” I found Alexa’s statement unusual even for her, but I didn’t press her on it. I wanted to get some sleep so I could be up early to discover the secrets of London. I was awake at nine and fit for adventure. Alexa, however, was dead to the world, and it was well past lunchtime before I could drag her out into the hot afternoon sun. I suggested that we walk across town and take in the city sights. Alexa shadowed me, her head buried in her phone, making only sporadic utterances of those familiar “hmms” and “huhs” as I vainly persisted to showcase significant landmarks. That evening I found myself waiting for Alexa in a traditional English pub. She said she was going to run to the hotel and come back, but that was two hours ago. “I decided to stay in the room and get caught up on my Instagram stories” she confessed, later explaining to me that she doesn’t like to miss any posts from the people she follows. London was experiencing a heatwave at the time, and that second night I was awoken by those sweltering temperatures. It was four in the morning, and Alexa was still awake, and still staring at the blue glow of her screen. Her all-night tweeting was the reason she stayed in bed until dinnertime, leaving the hotel only briefly to buy a snack from the corner store before returning to her irresistible Instagram stories. In secret I began following along with Alexa’s insta-rendition of her journey in London. Dozens of colourful, carefully filtered photographs flooded her stream. To the world it looked like she was living that yolo lifestyle – visiting breathtaking landmarks by day and partying in lively pubs at night. But the reality was Alexa hadn’t truly experienced any of it. Her body was in London, but her mind certainly wasn’t. On my last day, we took a sunny stroll through London’s famous Hyde Park. I tried to gently broach the subject of her online addiction by offering alternative suggestions. Alexa had been single for nearly fifteen years, and I suspected she used Twitter to fill this void. “Maybe you should try a dating app,” I suggested thinking that her time would be better spent chatting to real people she could meet in real life. “No,” Alexa replied. “Dating apps take a lot of time and I don’t want to spend my whole life staring at my phone.”