Instagram User
User Not Found
The yellow pages are gone. Maybe they are still published, IDK; if they are, it is probably more for novelty than utility. But what do I know? I lost a contact. She was not anyone special or anything. I’m sure she is “special” to the people closest to her; my brief interaction with her let me know that she would be.
This isn’t even about her. Although, she is in the periphery.
I travelled solo for a wedding happening on New Year’s Eve. I only knew the bride’s sister — an old friend, busy with the wedding preparations. For company then I hung out with her other friends who had rolled into town for the event. This woman, peripheral to the yellow pages, was part of them.
It was good to find a bunch of strangers (all having the same mutual friend) to hang out and experience the wedding together with. It was good to have found her. Because she was the kind of person who, in hindsight, you will remember as having a warm presence.
People exchange contacts. She asked for my phone number conversation moved towards exchanging contacts. And this wasn’t even we were leaving the town. It was the day before the wedding. She asked for my phone number, and I asked -
‘You got Instagram?’
‘Oh…okay sure’, she said.
Because in the 2020s, isn’t social media where it’s at? Phone numbers are so Alexander Graham Bell times. Or so I thought.
I came for content. When the invitation arrived, I thought it would be a fun experience to go to a wedding at New Year’s; but I also knew it would be something I could write about.
Once back home, I sat down to write. Mid-draft I got a DM saying she never bought the tickets. We made an inside joke about it. The next day she asked whether I wrote about the wedding, she was writing about the experience too.
I told her I was in the middle of it, and that I’d send it to her when I would hit publish. I told her I was curious about what she’d write too.
My story finished, I pulled out my DMs, and all I found was the blank silhouette of a person in the DP, with Instagram User written in place of her name. Our previous exchanges were present in the chat, but it looked like maybe I was chatting with a bot.
Not exactly, because the exchanges had more nuanced than any algorithm could ever generate. Still, it felt like that, because now on the other side was nobody. Maybe her digital ghost.
I published the story. My friend, the sister of the bride, reached out. Said she enjoyed it. I told her to pass it to her friend, the Instagram User who didn’t use IG no more.
She asked me if I would like her friend’s phone number so that I could pass it on myself. For some reason, I said no. Something compelled me not to get that number. I still don’t know why, but it felt like the absolute right thing to do.
If this were the time of the yellow pages, maybe it would be different.
If you want to read the story I promised to her, you can find it here -