There’s No Vaccine For This
The safest emotional space in the world for me is my four-person group chat where we are viciously critical and form factions against one another while debating the dumbest concepts ever invented by mankind.
“Staff Infection,” a group chat that started five years ago over Twitter direct messages before migrating to text message, is my home. My home consists of me, my close in-person friend (Emma), a mid-twenties baseball data archivist who I’ve met in-person one time (Jon, who we call Becker), and a person whose legal name is Richard Staff (none of us have ever met him in person).
Over the span of five years, we have developed something that goes far beyond — and much darker — than “inside jokes.” Sure, we have our own lexicon, repeating stupid phrases and typos with as much fluency as a correctly spelled word in the English language. But the real fabric of our four-person friendship is woven with relentless mockery, arguing, and complete blow-ups.
Sometimes we all form a consensus on one topic or opinion, an event rare enough that we all pause mid-conversation to marvel at how civilly we are behaving toward one another.
The dynamics that play out in Staff Infection (stupid-ass name) are what the people on Instagram who have misinterpreted therapy concepts to put them in a pastel-colored slideshow would call “toxic” at times. In polite society, you’re supposed to say things like “I am holding space for your feelings” instead of “genuine question: are you braindead?”
Therapyspeak is generally treated as offensive in our chat. There’s none of that horseshit emotional delicacy that Americans are obsessed with using to avoid the messiness of earnest, enduring relationships. We just let it rip.
As a result, Staff Infection is the first place we turn to with our difficult and complex emotions. At the end of the day, we’ve forced each other to walk through the fire to get here. We’re friends because of the mess, not in spite of it.
We keep a running list of “chat lore,” which consists mostly of times when one of us said or did something stupid and everyone else in the chat piled on to call the person stupid. It’s important to keep a record so that we make sure we’re bullying each other enough.
We once spent weeks trying to convince Emma to change out the bulb in her overhead light instead of sitting in the dark. Becker once tried to initiate a text conversation with a woman by asking her if she was familiar with the Paddington films. Richard skipped my birthday party four years ago because he knew someone who knew someone who might have had Covid (this was post-vaccine).
As for me, I once said I had a vague memory of watching Sinbad host the American broadcast of the demolition of the Berlin Wall. (I was born in 1990. The wall was not blown up.)
After Richard did some research, he revealed that what I was actually remembering was Sinbad hosting the implosion of the Hacienda Hotel in Las Vegas in 1996. Every time something goes wrong in my life — a breakup, a general bad day, something stupid I saw on the subway — one of them jumps to ask: “Was Sinbad there?”
Conflict and daily repeated mockery of each other’s biggest insecurities or traumas is what keeps us close.
We make fun of Emma for her pathological procrastination and for not having as much confidence as we think she should. We make fun of Becker as he tries to build the life he wants in adulthood. We make fun of Richard for refusing to reveal one single feeling or fact about himself while the rest of us bombard him with our own. And they make fun of me for being a lunatic with “questionable” decision making in my love life.
These are all real things that, to some extent or another, hold us back in our real lives beyond the group chat. But in our stupid shared space, these are the things that keep us bonded. Shame does not have a place in Staff Infection. Decorum doesn’t, either.
One recent morning, we were all discussing what each other’s bedside manner would be if we were (horrifically) physicians instead of whatever we are. (Freaks?) Here’s how we see each other:
“Doctor Emma be like “I just :/ I just can’t deliver the diagnosis until two days after you’re dead :/”
“Doctor Richard can’t make it to the appointment (someone in the hospital might have covid)”
“Doctor Lindsey be like “im like. homicidal.” as you go in for routine surgery”
“Doctor Becker interrupted in surgery by his mom calling to ask what time he got to hospital this morning and what patients he has today and why”
Welcome to Staff Infection, MD. We procrastinate, avoid human interaction, have anger issues, and are still sort of in the nest. We can’t fix your problems, but we’ll make fun of you for them. It’s the best medicine, trust us.
And yet, sincerity does sometimes creep out of the charred-forest nature of our friendship. It sneaks up on us and scares us until we banish it back to its emotional cave.
Recently, I sent a string of text messages that came out to roughly 700 words about a complex but meaningful interaction with an in-person friend. That external conversation had been profound to me, causing me to feel some sadness alongside a deeper appreciation for that friendship.
None of the people in Staff Infection know this friend of mine beyond their name and my connection to them. There was no practical reason for me to give them a feelings dump on something that has no implication for their own lives.
It was just something that had moved me greatly, and the Staffers have a great time analyzing each other from our individual perspectives. The problem was that I had been purely earnest in sharing this story, which was apparently contagious. This is what I received in response from Becker:
“I don’t think we necessarily want people to care about us in the same way or have everyone be uncritical or unwilling to have tougher conversations or whatever,” said this person who is a decade younger than me and who I have met one time.
Then, we realized the whole tone of the conversation was not exactly the lingua franca of the chat. It had been a nice moment, but it was time to get back to business as usual.
“I have Stage 4 Disgusted By Lindsey’s Sincerity,” he said.
“yeah i mean what the fuck man who is this bitch,” I said about myself.
“I’d rather you just call me a [loser] and tell me to die,” Becker said. “I can handle that better than you reacting with a fucking heart tapback.”
“The bitch is dead,” said Richard, who quotes Elton John’s “The Bitch is Back” when something good happens to me.
“Wow,” Emma said hours later, clearly not backreading anything in the chat.
I hope to never get along with these people for more than three hours at a time. It’s tough to imagine us all hanging out together in person (because Richard won’t let us). Civility has no place in our home. But camaraderie is our reward.
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