The Phone Farmer
A Description of a Spartan Lifestyle
Inside, sitting. Blood is moving, one assumes. Apps are running, generating passive income. Big tips came in yesterday, too. More income but still not enough, he thinks. The sleeping bag is filthy with sweat and crumbs. He sits on the shiny synthetic exterior of the bag. It’s the cooler side. It’s also cooler than the beige carpet, which was recently cleaned. His laptop rests on top of an old yearbook, open, on the floor, gently purring away, the router — also on the floor — in the corner of the room, by an outlet. He has two outfits. All of his other possessions he has sold. He has a car too. He’s not sure how much longer he’ll hold onto that.
He had made the decision to purge his belongings a few weeks ago, and since then he’s been steadily letting go, letting go of material goods and the spiritual baggage that comes along with them. The more things you have, the more you’re weighed down, he thought, one night, listlessly drinking coffee, cross-legged on the sleeping bag, wearing only boxers. He still had a T.V. back then. Back then. It seems so long ago, but it’s only been a few days. Time is warped in these white walls.
He’s lost weight. He had put on a fair amount in his mostly sedentary life. Work is spent sitting in a car ninety percent of the time, and the only exercise he gets is the short walk to the store, or sometimes, on the weekends, he’ll go a bit further, downtown, to meet coworkers for drinks and appetizers. Since he no longer keeps a stocked fridge and pantry, he has given up boredom-eating. If he wants to eat, he eats a meal. No snacks. Walk to the store. Buy food and cook. That’s how you lose weight. As for cookware, he keeps the bare essentials: one pot, one pan, one big wooden spoon, a plate, a bowl, a cup, a sharp knife, and one set of silverware. All that he cooks can be made with these few items.
He’s cut back with regard to his habits as well. Nicotine, he’s determined, is a waste of money. Caffeine, on the other hand, he considers inevitable. Beer — if he can help it — must be consumed with another. Sometimes it cannot be helped. Regardless, the same rule applies: he does not keep it stocked at home. He does not have cable. He’s sold all of his video games and consoles. The only games he allows himself to play are ones he can play on the laptop. He’s taken to emulation. SNES and PlayStation games, mostly. “The classics,” he calls them. But, like his other habits, he’s cutting back. The time is better spent.
For his regular job, he delivers pizza. Has been for ten years. It’s his job on the side that absorbs most of his time. Tending the farm, his wall of smartphones, fastened secularly with velcro, power cords neatly bundled and running to surge-protectors. The money-generating apps mostly run on their own, passively, but eventually they lag up and have to be reset manually. The apps play videos. The videos have ads. The ad companies pay the app companies a small amount of money for each ad viewed. The app companies share these fractions of cents with registered viewers, adding incentive for viewership. He’s sure there’s some kind of funny business going on, but he can’t be bothered:
He saw the potential for abuse right away. He started rapidly acquiring phones, cheap ones, old ones, phones that are basically useless for personal use, but which run well enough to play videos. The whole scene looks rather ridiculous: his entire wall is covered with these phones, spaced unevenly, the wires running into zip-tied bunches. He was too embarrassed to invite anyone over. For this reason his apartment remained off-limits to all but his closest friends and family.
They mostly disapprove of his “side hustle”. His brother especially. He calls it mental illness. “It’s like hoarding,” his brother said, one family dinner, “he’s isolating himself with this ridiculous, repetitive nonsense. You’re barely making any money.”
“But I am making money,” he said.
“Sweatshop wages.”
“It’s hardly work at all though. Just gotta look at some phones once every hour or so.”
“But you don’t, I’ve seen you. You look at it all day.”
“I have a job. There’s no need to criticize my hobby, especially when it’s making a little money on the side.
“A hobby, he says. You’re obsessed.”
He thought about opening up to his coworker, Peter, but decided against it. Things are going well at work. No reason to complicate things by having to explain to what a phone farm is. He showed his best friend, he thought it odd but rather liked it.
“It’s cyberpunk,” he said.
Reality is cyberpunk. He sips the traveler’s cup of coffee he got from the cafe-laundromat down the street, where he had washed his one alternate outfit. He’ll wash the one he’s wearing now in a few days. Part of living the spartan lifestyle is putting up with dirty clothes. Though one should always bathe.
