The Anarchist

On a typical Monday afternoon

He had spent hours. Hours over hours over days. He’d carefully curated his content, formatted the files, selected the perfect cover art, and set up alt-accounts to which he could share these forbidden diamonds with the world.

Within the course of the same five minutes, the following two things happened.

First, he excitedly exclaimed that someone had already liked and commented on one of his posts. This was proof, he knew, that his hard work was appreciated and in fact needed for those fans who had previously gone without such coveted content. He was doing the world a service. Yo-ho-ho!

Second, his face fell. His shoulders slumped. His brow furrowed. “What the f…” escaped his lips. When questioned as to the cause of such a turnaround in his mood, he reported in a monotone voice that his YouTube account had been disabled. He had gotten warnings before and knew this was a risk, but it had happened now, and he had to face the injustice.

Had this happened before? Inquiring minds wanted to know. Did he know why and was there a reason to believe that this was coming before he had poured his energies into this sabotaged endeavor?

Yes. This was not the first time. It was a risk he was willing to take, a sacrifice he was willing to make, and he was undeterred.

“I am proud of your skills, but I don’t want you to use your computer science education to be a ….” hmm. Criminal wasn’t the right word here. Not since he felt that what he was doing was not a crime or at the least not one made against a just and reasonable law. “…. societal deviant.”

His indignation was a loud clap of his palm on the wooden dining room table. “If I marched in a Black Lives Matter protest, would you consider me a societal deviant?”

“No, but I have a fear that you’ll be twenty-four years old, living in your own apartment, and I’m going to get a phone call one day and it will be the one call you are allowed from prison.”

Pinching the bridge of his nose, “It would probably be because I was a political prisoner, not because I did anything illegal.”

A vision of the future began to form. “I could imagine me asking you if you did anything wrong and you would say yeah, you punched a cop in the face, but he had it coming to him.”

“I’m not stupid, Mom. I know better than to admit that over the phone.”

He had to make up for lost time now. Whereas his previous plan for the day involved writing and searching for internships, he now had to set up a new account, upload new content, but in a different, more strategic way. Drastic times, drastic measures, and all that. When it was insisted upon that he not sacrifice any minutes of the mere sixty that he had promised to dedicate to job searching, he conceded, putting on a playlist that he had also painstakingly indexed.

A mere fifteen minutes into what was supposed to be concentrated time, another calamity broke into his quotidian reality. One of the songs on his playlist had been removed because the account that had created it was deleted. This particular account was one he followed and liked very much, so he had to, just had to, find out why.

“So, find out why. But do it after you finish this hour. Nothing will change in the next forty-five minutes. I promise you. Stay focused.”

He couldn’t possibly, he insisted. How could he be expected to focus on applying for positions when his mind was now preoccupied with this insistent mystery? He must know what happened and he must know now.

“Your attention is yours, but you are giving it away to something outside yourself. You don’t have to.”

This was the only way. It was the most important thing to him right then and there. I just didn’t understand.