The uncovered realization
You are a 19 year old active forum user living in a small city. You are a loner; you don’t have any friends. Your a college sophomore , and your school year is about to start , you want to potentially make a friend (you didn’t have any luck making friends your freshmen year of college; so you start losing hope in yourself) you walk into your first class with not much expectations; you hope that your teacher will be nice… nothing else …
You walk in … teacher assigns your seat for the semester; you sit down, look around and inspect the people who will be sitting next to you. You make your assumptions about them and go back to listening to your teacher talking about the class syllabus.
Class was boring, given it only the the first day, but you move on to your next class…
Next day you wake up tired , realizing you have to go to class you get ready and hop on the bus to your college campus. You arrive to class 10 minutes earlier. Out of the students you arrive first… or so you thought… you look at your table that was assigned to you yesterday and see someone sitting on the table to the right of your seat. You don’t think too much of it when walking up and taking your seat. You sit down and prepare your course materials. You look to your right side and can’t help but notice that the person that is sitting next to you is really locked in on their phone; maybe they are playing a game ? Texting someone important ? Or maybe they are just a really dedicated TikTok scroller ?
Being the autist you are, you try to take a quick peep inconspicuously at what your peer to the right is doing on their phone. It feels like their screen brightness was put all the way down. Your conclusion is that they are just texting someone.
Next day at class you decide take another closer look at what your pal to the right of you is doing on his phone yet again. You keep noticing that this person has really repetitive finger movement on his phone screen. After class ends; you stand up to leave. On your way to the bus stop you notice your classmate that sits next to you in class is also walking to the bus stop, to not make things awkward you quickly walk by them. As you walk by you take a quick glance (yet again) at what they are doing on their phone. It is unclear what you saw but you see something familiar; maybe it is a familiar social media…
After a couple weeks of class, your teacher assigns a project. He pairs up the whole class so that everyone can work on the project in pairs. To make things simpler, he assigns everyone the person sitting to their right as their partner. You realize who you are paired with… You think to yourself, ‘Fuck, I’m with this loser…’
It is time you officially introduce yourself to this “geek”
You both introduce yourself to each other , exchange phone numbers , and begin the project in class …
The next two weeks you and your partner work on the project. You quickly understand that this person is also unhappy with who he is paired with…
But how ??? You view them as a weird geek that is glued to their phone. What could they possibly see negative in you ?
As the days go by, you and your partner work hard on this project. You still continue your awkward investigation into what your partner is so glued to on their phone during breaks, before class starts, and on his walk to the bus stop.
You decide to give up on finding out the truth of what holds your partner tied to their phone…
Your final conclusion: they watch lots of TikTok and love to leave many comments under the videos they watch. And also they refresh their fyp page quite often.
Your project that you worked really hard on is finally complete. Only one more thing left to do… You tap your partner on the shoulder and ask them to turn in the project to the teacher. (You decide to put the pressure on them; you’re also a little nervous to do it yourself…) They’re caught off guard after staring at their phone a little too intently. They subconsciously accept your request, and THEIR PHONE DROPS OUT OF THEIR HANDS WAY TOO QUICKLY. They must not have even thought about it. They stand up a little too quickly, take the project, walk up to the teacher, and turn it in.
YOU REALIZE WHAT JUST HAPPENED…
THEIR PHONE IS SITTING ON THE DESK…
No but you’ve already given up , you already made up your conclusion for his mysterious phone usage… no you can’t look …
Your partner is too busy talking with the teacher , you decide to violate their privacy for self validation.
You look at the phone, but their screen is too dark… you bring your head closer … you see it
Your heart stops beating… you stare at their phone for a good 5 seconds.
You see the most unexpected thing ever … the exact same forum you rot on daily is sitting open on his phone. You get back in your educated sitting position so when your partner comes back they wouldn’t suspect anything.
They take their seat look at their phone … look at you … it appears as they are suspecting something…
After a couple seconds you feel like they forgot about their suspicion that was brewing up.
They begin to stare at their phone again. You look at them as if they are some sort of ghost , luckily they don’t see your stare.
You arrive at your house and can’t believe that you get to see a forum member in real life. You got to see the forums front page but you didn’t get to see their profile, so who the user is becomes a never ending thought for you.
While scrolling on the forum, you begin to think about the potential users who might be your classmate. You start making a whole ton of assumptions, trying to piece together every little detail you know about them. You look at their usernames, profile pictures, posts, and even the way they type, wondering if any of them could possibly match the person you sit next to in class. The more you think about it, the more possibilities you come up with; and somehow, every user starts to seem suspicious.
During the weekend, being bored you scroll on the forum; you see a thread titled ‘Potentially might’ve got uncovered as a forum user by a normie’
You click on it…
The whole time you thought you were being silky smooth with your gazing at your classmates phone … but you were deceived by your own brain … they had noticed EVERYTHING!
Everything in the thread seems to be in line with your classmates actions. You realize that this is the user who is also your classmate …
You rep and leave a meaningful post under the thread to avoid ANY possible suspicion that it’s you …
What is your next move from here ?
A) Confess to the user and reveal to them your identity (this could potentially help with your search of a friend)
B) Understand that you have gone too far and violated their privacy and leave them alone … FOREVER!
C) Start stalking the user to find out about their origins.
D) Reveal yourself to them online
