I didn’t have much of an appetite for the Oscar’s this year.

Normally I’d be all in, enjoying the glittering and flimsy spectacle as much anybody, but this year felt different, and whatever spirit or anticipation I’d typically bring to the affair was just not there. In fact, I was dreading it, imaging it another long– really long– continuation of all the sneering, bitter arguments that were ceaselessly looping through my media feeds.

Social media has begun to feel like tuning in to some late-night AM radio call-in show. The voices, disembodied and angry, fire from the dark, each one inveighing some furious certainty. There is no complaint too small or too large, and each one comes obsessively detailed by the over-confident sender. There’s an urgency to all these declarations, too, as if impulse more than thought, and the momentum always moves forward– retreat or rumination, let alone a kind of sympathy, utterly unthinkable.

To willingly step into this each day, as I do, is an act of madness. To me, it feels like being closed in a room with a hundred growling dogs while the unmediated grievances of the world strobe in front of you. It colours your mood, this, so even before something of “actuality” happens in your physical life, you’re already tense and combat ready– you’ve already become somebody you don’t want to be. And I swear, if we could somehow tap into the cataract of doomed energy that feeds this monster, we would be masters of the universe.

Initially I had imagined the Internet as something almost utopian. It would be democratizing and unifying, kind of like The Force, and united by the millions we would be able to destroy evil Death Stars. Instead, it’s proven to be infinitely divisive, revealing that the Internet itself might be a horrible Death Star.

The limitless options presented by technology have moved us away from what had been commonly shared. Whatever our interests may be, however perverse, remote or idiosyncratic, we can find a subculture dedicated to that passion or hatred online. We are never alone, but our channels never seem to be open, either. Living in gluttonous echo chambers of our own devising, we now customize our experiences, changing them to suit our needs rather than adopting to the mean. In this way, popular culture is being eradicated, with each person becoming a hermetically sealed culture unto themselves.

Naturally, the idea of compassion or empathy withers in this climate of radical tribalization. It’s now completely normal for people to proudly boast of de-Friending somebody who disagrees with their politics or to happily live within the paradox of being tolerant of everything but intolerance. If you step into Twitter, far from finding a marketplace for the free exchange of ideas, you find a war zone. Every once in a while you pop up from your trench, fire off a few salvos at the enemy, and then duck down again—kind of like a shooter game.

The Internet in the age of Trump ( who I believe saw and exploited this rather than created it), is a grim landscape lacking in kindness.

Full of hall monitors ready to pounce on anybody not adhering to the common orthodoxy, it’s a place you go to confirm your certainties and your enemy’s idiocies. It is a place where fighting, where aggression is the entertainment, and it is perhaps the loneliest place on the planet.

Still unencumbered by whatever obstacles or sorrows the day might later present, everybody walking down the street had a crisp, optimistic look to them. Animated by the sunlight, they looked happy and ready for it all.

I stood outside waiting for a cab, watching an older man I’d become familiar with pulling weeds from a garden. Always wearing a baseball cap and a plaid, farmer’s shirt, the man has a slow, gentle and slightly uncomprehending manner, as if perhaps stricken wordless by trauma at some point in his life. From the grand house behind the property he was working on, a man walked confidently out the front door.

“Don’t pull so hard!” he said. The man in the baseball hat looked up, blinking, confused. “We talked about this,” the confident man continued, “use your head!!” He thumped his forefinger against his temple, underscoring this point. He then continued up the street, satisfied and looking like he felt he was at the top of his game, while the kneeling worker, demoralized now,  appeared as if he was feeling the exact opposite. It was 8:30 in the morning and this was the start to both of their days.

There were about 10 people waiting for the elevators in the lobby at the Mt. Sinai hospital. An older woman with smooth, freshly polished skin smiled at everyone. She was pretty, wearing the sort of hat you’d see at a fancy horse race and she carried her cane with style. “Look at us, all watching the numbers to see which one comes first, it’s like we’re gambling at a casino!” Given the hospital setting, I thought about this probably more than I should have.

On the sixth floor I got off for my appointment and as I was checking in with the receptionist, the woman in the hat showed up. She was lost and when she was told that she was on the wrong floor– that CT scans were done on the 5^th floor– a look of frustration and anger clouded her pleasant face. She turned to me, “It’s the elevators! They’re not working! The button said this was the 5^th floor, the 5^th, not 6^th!” and then she began to cry.

The receptionist was blessed with a Caribbean accent and liked to keep herself busy.

“I have my church clothes, I have my supermarket clothes, I have my pharmacy clothes and I have my go-out-and-have-a-good-time-clothes. It’s just the way that I am,” she told nobody in particular.

In constant movement, she was singing at her desk. She simply could not stop.

“We will praise you for the rest of our days. Hallelujah!” she sang.

Snapping her fingers and even sometimes dancing, she had all the sober looking  technicians giggling as they peeked over at her through paperwork. A heavier woman, also with a Caribbean accent, walked by shaking her head, “Listen Anne Murray, I will talk to you later,” and pointing her finger, gave her a look that suggested a genial, running battle.

“I got my praise on,” the receptionist shot back, “ain’t nothing going to go wrong this morning. You bring it.”