by Don Hall

Jack sits in a small room. He used to think the room was a lot bigger. It’s not. In fact, it seems more crowded than his memory serves. Photographs of the room 100 years before appear more spacious, less people. Today, however, there are exactly one hundred people in the room (including Jack). It feels crowded.

Most of the one hundred are quiet, going about their business. Working on projects in groups or alone. Some seem hungry, others angry, a few others appear to be content.

In the center of the room, however, there are three. Each has an electronic megaphone. Two of them are pointing their megaphones at one another and are barking ideology at one another, randomly calling out and cancelling the other. The third stands in between them and broadcasts through the megaphone jokes, wry observations, and tales of travel and food and pets.

For the most part, the rest of the one hundred ignore these three despite how goddamned loud they are. They tune them out because they don’t have megaphones and can’t find it in their minds to care much about all the yelling.

Somehow, these three are pushing a narrative on the rest with a sense of ego and narcissism that is a bit astonishing. All because they have megaphones.

There are 7.7 billion people on the planet.
There are 216 million Twitter accounts.

Three percent of almost anything is considered insignificant in the larger scheme. Let them scream at each while the rest of us do the work, OK?