The aeroplane and the radio have brought us closer together. The very nature of these inventions cries out for the goodness in men – cries out for universal brotherhood – for the unity of us all.
Charlie Chaplin, The Great Dictator
It’s Thanksgiving in America, that magical time where we slaughter turkeys to celebrate something or other. Honestly, it’s usually just a good time to hang out with friends and family and enjoy a shit-ton of food. 2020, of course, had to change all that. The sane among us celebrated only with close family or alone or wised up and used some of the many tools we’ve used this year to stay together while remaining apart. The insane, or at least the completely uncaring bastards among us, got together and threw monster parties because reasons. Maybe a bit of luck will shine through and we won’t see a massive spike in sickness and death just in time for them to repeat the trick around Xmas.
But beyond the pandemic picking away us like the rats in Johnny Got His Gun. Even beyond the fact that economies are teetering on the brink and idiocy is still running rampant in Washington. Even beyond all the madness of 2020, there is still a shining light out there.
We live in a magical world.
I tweeted earlier today that I should Microsoft a thank you letter for XBox Live. Now, I don’t much care for online gaming, but it’s saved my son’s sanity in a time when seeing his friends in person means yelling across the park at each other. Now they can spend all night shooting each other or racing each other, hooting and hollering, and still keep safely apart. Seriously, if it wasn’t for online gaming, he probably would have lost his shit by now.
We all would have. Twenty years ago video calling was relegated to specialized setups that cost a small fortune. Now, you can do it on the phone in your pocket. I’ve spoken to people who set up Zoom meetings and had Thanksgiving dinner with their families even though they were scattered all over the country. We’re connected eight ways to Sunday and none of this technology is brand new; we’re just discovering how important it can be.
Charlie Chaplin’s The Great Dictator was released in 1940. It was the first time he spoke in a movie and that last speech was amazing. It was a time when radio and airplanes were the same approximate age as teleconferencing is now. They were still magical things. Game changing things. Things that helped people come closer together. Flash forward 80 years and we have our game-changing things, our own ways to bring ourselves together.
Normally, this would be the point where I’d bust out some feel-good story to prove that the world’s not going to shit. That, after all, is the WATWB way; share a little love through some happy news. There’s plenty of that, too. Not one, but three possible Covid vaccines. A new era in Washington. A bit of new hope on the horizon. But I didn’t become a writer to follow the rules. Here’s your bit of happiness: Even though we’ve been pulled apart, we have ways to bring ourselves back together. All we have to do is use them.
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Check out this month’s co-hosts: Lizbeth Hartz, Inderpreet Uppal, Shilpa Garg, Damyanti Biswas, and Roshan Radhakrishnan
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And now your moment of Zen.
Eric Lahti 
I’m not a gamer, but I can appreciate how the Xbox has helped to keep your son happy through this year of one bad thing after another. I’ve been finding my own technology, like streaming TV, to stay occupied, but there’s so much more around us if we simply look. I hope you had a nice Thanksgiving. My roomie and I stayed home, played Christmas music while playing games, laughed, talked to our relatives on the phone and ate good stuff. It was a good day without risking our lives or those of others. 🙂
We stayed home, watched movies, played games, took naps. It was a good, low-stress Thanksgiving.
I do not know much about gaming, but I do understand Xbox helping stay sane – especially during the pandemic.
Under normal times, I’d try to pull him off XBox Live at a decent time, but since it’s really the only interaction he gets with his friends, we largely let it go.
My daughter has discovered video calling and enjoys playing Roblox on the phone with her school friends. It kept her (and me) much calmer than we would have been under lockdown. And I have embraced Zoom! Happy Thanksgiving 🙂
All those telecon tools are amazing. I’ve done three author interviews over Zoom, talked to my son’s teachers, worked – albeit with MS Teams – and generally kept things going. This quarantine would be miserable if we didn’t have those tools.