Tight Schedule

In the middle of his hectic day of hustle and bustle, Ako felt he needed a break. A breather for a minute will do. In his typical fashion, a break involved some social media networking to take his mind off work. So, whipping out his phone from his pocket, he headed for the door as the most recent meeting ended.

“See you in a few ticks,” he said to his office-space co-worker, George.

He didn’t hear George’s reply as he was out of earshot the next instant.

The first thing that greeted his gaze on his facebook timeline was an incendiary, tribal, invective post heavy with religious undercurrents from a friend.

He frowned, his forehead burrowing.

Not the type of virtual relaxation he had in mind when he decided to check his facebook account. I can do without this, he mused to himself. Yet, because it was this particular friend with whom he had some good memories that went way back, he decided to wade in.

He clicked the “Comment” button.

The slow internet network took its jolly while to load earlier reactions and comments. So, because he didn’t have all day to spare and had other notifications from other apps to check, he decided to commence with his perspective on the matter in his own comment on the post. Before long, just as he’d got two neat paragraphs of his contribution to the subject matter going, he looked up and saw that the reactions had finally loaded. The post was not more than 24 minutes old and had shockingly garnered 300 reactions!

His eyes bulged.

Slightly taken aback, he lost track of where he was going with his own comment. To recall, he re-read what he’d typed until then. When he caught up with his train of thoughts and wanted to continue, the initial comments loaded fully.

It was another shocker: 150+ comments.

He tried reading through a few of them when he recovered and his prior assumptions were confirmed. About 8 commenters were responsible for more than 85% of those 150+ comments. They were working like a ragtag team of paid hands. They supported whoever supported the poisonous intent of the post and went hard against dissenters with vitriol.

On a good day, Ako knew they were no match for him. All bloody 8 of them. But he just wanted to comment for his friend’s sake – the initial poster.

However, with each comment he read, he felt he didn’t have the strength today. He thought of the 4 meetings he had left for the day, the drafts seated around his table that he needed to send to 2 different clients, the slides for his Wednesday presentation before the Board and the visit to the in-laws for the morrow’s evening.

Oh no!

Much as he wished to take them all on, he shook his head. He could pick holes in their arguments and the premises via which they reached their conclusions all day – and with a pleasure he knew he’d relish. Some lines of arguments were already crystallising in his head. He’d sparred textually with two of the 8 on two different occasions in the past and took them to the cleaners for free. The rest weren’t any better. But, as he shook his head again, George tapped him on the shoulder.

“Time to meet the architects, A-boy,” George piped using his nickname.

Ako shook his head one more time to come back to the real world from the virtual.

“Right behind you, G,” Ako replied George.

Ako touched the fingerprint scanner to bring his phone screen back to life and selecting the entire text he’d composed a short while ago to post as his comment, he scrolled through the menu options that opened. He clicked “Delete”.

He surmised to himself, that he wasn’t running away. Not just today.

As he went in for the meeting with the architects, he made a mental note to send his friend - the poster - a personal message later.