I went back to my fucking room with lazy feet and collapsed on my bed. Shit. I wish I hadn’t woken up on the first place, but when sleep is over what is there to do? I fished my hand deep in the blankets and got out my fucking phone. 13%. Where’s my charger? I was too tired to look for it so I found myself in Facebook; since my thumb was the only thing my body was willing to move. I scrolled past a bunch of unfunny memes that other people found funny. Like this one showing Adam Sandler’s (I don’t know if you know him) confused face with a caption that reads: “having those weird conversations with your friends and thinking if anyone heard us right now we’d be put into a mental hospital.” Is this shit funny? Apparently due to the number of reactors – 4k – people find this meme hilarious, some even went as far as bloating the comment section with laughing emojis. Damn. There’s another one with cartoon dudes, one is inscribing the occupation title on a door while the other looks on with a speech bubble pointed at his head: “therapist is one word, George.”

George, the inscriber had written The Rapist. This one wasn’t funny too, just clever. I only smirked at it. Then a message popped up on my messenger. It’s this chick I’ve been chatting with for three weeks now. She’s my online friend. Holly Mayweather was her name. She was from States. That was a bummer.

“U reply so quick to my texts lol”

“Bro I literally have nothing to do with my life rn,” I texted back. She hit me with laughing emojis. It was in moments like these where I felt like these small yellow faces tend to be a bit phoney and exaggerative sometimes, like she could hit me with three laughing emojis yet she may not feel that way, she may not even find my sense of humour that charming. I can send you a bunch of hearts and still wish you were dead. That’s why I wanted face to face conversations where I can be able to detect any sort of duplicity you might hide. Energy never lies, no matter how much you may smile I’d still see through your shit. But Holly was in the US and I was here in Mzansi. That’s why it’s a bummer.

We’ve been chatting for so long I knew our Facebook friendship was genuine. We chatted a lot about different shit and we sent each other pictures of the current activities we were doing at the time, although she’d become hesitant with her own pictures and me too I would find it hard to take a selfie and send it to her. I hated my selfies, they always looked like I.D photos. All of a sudden Holly just became offline and I immediately felt like dying. Nothing as irritating as when you are texting with your favourite person and then they just dont reply back, they disappear. Like…what am I supposed to do with myself now?

I filled my text with angry words it became a paragraph, but I pressed delete instead of the send button. I knew she’d ignore me forever, or worse, she might just block me. Holly was now offline. I had to accept it. Fuck. I got so bored I wandered around Facebook going from post to post, cringing at the jokes and comments, only smiling at the really funny ones. There wasn’t anything that I’d find on social media that could make me laugh my ass off (or LMAO!) as they say, I don’t know why. People try so hard to be known. You’d find a killer post with thousands of haha reactions, a couple of scrolls and clicks later you’ll find the same post by someone else, as if the share button isn’t working. I thought that’s the only joke I’d genuinely laugh at, people desperate to be seen as funny. Or they think they are funny. Imagine a stand up comedian cracking up his funniest punchline joke but the entire venue of people remains silent. Damn. Now that’s what I’d laugh at.

Anyways, I got so bored I thought about trolling someone just for the fuck of it. Those opinionated narcissistic assholes who have a lot of followers. But apparently someone else beat me to it. I came across this post–it was trending, the post with most reactions by this particular profile–this transgender person, saying that she (or was it they? I didn’t check) advocates for sex-workers. “They are grown ups and it’s they are bodies after all,” reads the rest of her(or their) post. Obviously her (or their) followers agreed, some didn’t and among those was this guy who commented off-topic and had started to attack this girl because she was (or they were) trans. The guy’s comment garned a lot of reactions, and this guy, Vladimir Cornflakes had a huge following of his own so the whole brawl with the trans, Barbie Jabari, commenced into jokes and insults.

They both had a lot of followers which meant that there were a lot of spectators reading, commenting, laughing, quoting their favourite lash. It was a last night thing though, so I read all the 246 comments of the entire argument. It was more entertaining than my life. There was nothing to do.

The trans bitch won because she’s (or they’re ) the last one who commented, her (or their) followers supporting her (or them ) and she also had the home ground advantage because all of this was happening in her (or their) own post. Vladimir was nowhere to be seen. Until I checked his profile. Dude had taken the argument to his own timeline where he made pejorative posts against this Barbie Jabari person, calling her (or them) gender-confused and accusing her(or them ) of following the trend of being non-binary (so she’s really non-binary, my suspicions were right.) Shit was funny I admit. Not that I’m homophobic or anything but damn, social media feuds can be amusing sometimes. Especially when it’s two adults who have a lot of followers and they don’t wanna be seen as losers or weak so they always clap back at the haters.

My fucking phone disturbed me from reading as it dropped me a threatning notification that it will switch off at any goddamn second. 2%. Fuck. Where’s my charger? I tried to get up but my back felt like there were a thousand bricks on top of it. Last post I read from Vladimir is that Barbie Jabari has blocked him. He called them a coward in that post. So I guess that made him the overall winner, the trans blocking him was a sign of forfeit.

Tell us: do you think some people identify themselves as non-binary because it’s a trend?