Entry #6 or WhatsApp Stickers

I work with this lady who receives notifications on her phone about every 10 minutes. And every 10 minutes or so, my whole desk vibrates.

As I type type type away at my 12 to 15 emails a day, I am suddenly woken up from my Microsoft Outlook daydream by the incessant buzzing of the notifications of her WhatsApp groups and WhateverApp groups she's in.

Who needs to talk that much throughout the day?

What is so important that needs to be shared right away?

The truth is, I have no clue what these notifications are about. They could be from her children's school group chats, with the "sMOTHERers" updating each other on every fart their kids release into the world. Maybe it's the family group chat, sharing memes, Minion-themed good morning messages and Bible quote GIFs. Reader, wouldn't you agree that Whatsapp stickers are a plague to this world? People spend hours of their lives and countless conversations sending these back and forth to eachother, conveying deep emotions and sharing personal sentiments. You can even give someone your condolences through a Facebook Troll face, circa 2010.

But do these notifications vibrate my table into shards? Yes. And am I mad about it? Well, how could I not be? All this brain busting buzzing makes me miss the good ol' AOL Chat room days, when you would have to dial-up and log-on every time you wanted to talk to people on the line. Nowadays, if we have one single itty bitty Wi-Fi bar, we are connected to everyone we have ever met, kissed, slapped, tripped over, smashed into, stole from, and sneezed on while on public transport.

I was born in 1999 though. I never had an AOL day in my life. Even before puberty, I already knew what Facebook was. So who am I to miss this glorious disconnection of the past?

I work in an office. With individual desks, monstrous copy machines, pictures of someone's kids framed in macaroni and lotsa paper clips! In 2026, if you work in an office like this, it is very common, if not mandatory, to have a 40-50 year old mother as a colleague. There is nothing wrong with this. It is simply the state of Nature.

These women are often warm and gentle with you. They offer their help with an open heart. They feel guilty when they use their contract-mandated vacation days. They stay later and complain that they cannot pick up their children on time. They are always busier than everyone else, so they say. And consequently, they leave their phones buzzing until they've run out of things to buzz about.

They are also the ones who believe every video or article they have ever come across on the internet. I can picture them perfectly, sitting in their bed at night, their bedside light glowing in the background, their husbands making a move, but they are not there. They are lost, absorbed, consumed by the blue light glow. Their dry index finger doomscrolls through Facebook and Instagram reels of AI puppies saving the lives of AI babies. Their glasses, slowly sliding down to the tips of their noses, work overtime as a mirror for their screen, which plays 5-Minute Crafts videos in between battle rounds of Candy Crush.

And every single 9 to 5 of my life spent in this company, my colleague receives a constant stream of these videos, from all the group chats she has ever been added to.

The problem is that my colleague, well, she leaves her phone on the corner of MY desk, instead of hers. It's more practical for her like that. It sits at the edge, vibrating into oblivion like it's trying to kill itself. It has seen too many of those Minion memes. And I sit in my ergonomic desk chair, legs crossed like a true-born Gen Z, flinching every time I hear the herd of wildbeasts running down the canyon inside the CPU of her smartphone.

I have never in all my life heard such powerful vibration. What level does she have it on? It's like her phone is about to transform into a werewolf for the first time, under its first full moon.

It's buzzing right now as I am writing to you, reader. My fingers are shaking. I cannot press the wight kiiys. To the rest of my team, I look like a junkie in withdrawal, like an epileptic in Tomorrowland, like a cartoon character when he's cold. But it's just a phone, buzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzing.