Rumpus: I think the Internet is the greatest argument for absurdism, ever. We’re all starring in our own version of Waiting for Godot, essentially. Keeping busy with the inane. How did you approach the idea of online vs in-person emotional need for Zachary? Is there a difference?

Seidlinger: Everything functions as one big grandiose play, and society as a whole is our stage. We are all acting to the best of our abilities so that we may remain unscathed and more importantly—ahead of the curve. There isn’t a difference, at least in Zachary’s case. He views interaction as the act of presenting himself to another, which can (depending on the situation) be frightening. His emotions are precious (I think we all feel the same way, right?) and he feels vulnerable in nearly every situation, be it a tweet or standing in front of a group of people: he finds society in general absurd. Society is absurd, with its demands, its social classes, its structures preventing (while at the same time allowing) people to move in a certain way. We look for opportunities to be better, to be more visible and relevant. The Internet merely accentuates what is already all around us; you could say it really has become our own modern Waiting for Godot. We scroll through our newsfeeds, waiting hungrily for the next trending topic. We post, comment, tweet, favorite, and retweet in hopes of there being something that happens. Our “Godot” in essence is the act of being relevant, of having something take hold. We are emotionally charged only when something happens. If nothing happens, which happens to be most of the time, we continue scrolling, hitting refresh. Staring at screens. Zachary is merely one of us, an example. We aren’t like him but, at the same time, we are.

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Jay Slayton-Joslin: You recently published an article on Buzzfeed about the anxiety of social media. Do you feel that this is a necessary evil in the modern day age of self-promoting and publishing?

Michael Seidlinger: Oh yeah, you better believe that social media is rewiring how we think, communicate, and function as individuals in modern society. I mean, the 24-hr news cycle alone is a testament to how information technology has restructured the cultural conscience. With artists—be it an author or not—there’s this gravitational pull to the social media platform as a means of both promotion and fascination. In the Buzzfeed article, I wrote about relevancy and the need for validation. It’s very real and almost always, if even not the main reason someone uses social media, one of the things that keeps a person coming back. How often do you find yourself checking your phone for notifications?

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