The light of the computer screen bathed the dark room in a faint glow. The inhabitant of the room watched a new advertisement.

“Today I put to the test five socks assist gadgets,” said the advertiser who called himself the Crazy Russian Hacker. He then proceeded to demonstrate how the tool was operated. “First you put your sock on the gadget like this,” putting his sock inside out onto a small plastic half-pipe. “Once you’ve done that, what you’re going to do is grab it like this,” setting the tool on the ground near his foot with a stick. “Then you take your foot and slide it all the way in.” The sock wrapped nicely around his ankle. “Boom. Nice. Eh, I did pretty good job except this part right here. But I did not have to bend over so maybe I will use when I am old.”

The advertisement suddenly cut back to the hosts. The camera pivoted around to the front the host’s desk. The backdrop was a colorful filtered view of a city skyline. Today there was a skyline of the city of New York. The desk was a transparent glass box behind which the two characters sat on white plastic spinny chairs. The man and the woman were exuberant characters who were easily excited at the simplest things.

“Miranda, the Crazy Russian Hacker is one of my favorite guests on this show,” said Benjamin, who had just joined the show 2 months prior. Miranda had been on the 24-hour cast since its conception 5 years prior, so she was one of the most familiar faces of the new broadcasting era.

“You always say that Ben, your enamourmentation is noted,” she said with a tongue-in-cheek tone. Enamourmentation probably wasn’t a word, but Miranda would create new words everyday. Miranda continued,

“Now if this is just your first time tuning in and you don’t know how this program works…”

“It would be weird if you didn’t” Benjamin interrupted. Both hosts laughed.

“If you don’t know how this program works, you get a point for every 30 minutes of consecutive time tuning in.”

“You can’t just leave your computer screen running in the background, your face has to actually be watching the screen with the feed. If you get enough points, you might be honored at the end of our 24-hour broadcast with your name on the top 30 leaderboard.”

Just then, a message popped up in the bottom right hand corner of the screen. It was one of his classmates from school, @doubletake78. The inhabitant had time to read the message, the time when just the hosts were talking didn’t count for points anyway. The message read: “Hey did you see @annabobanna2008 got to the top 30?” She was one of the members in their chat room. He vaguely knew her in real life from somewhere. “She got 1200 hours over the course of this last year.” The inhabitant was impressed. He would have to step up his game. He had built up 1036 hours over the last 12 months. The broadcast continued.

“Up next we have this ridiculous chair.” The hosts scoffed. The feed then showed a time lapse of an IKEA chair getting constructed. The final product looked flimsy and uncomfortable. The hosts laughed at its unusual shape and general structure and how hard it would be to make.

“Where the hell would you put that Miranda? I’m sure your boyfriend would love to build that for you.” The inhabitant laughed along, thinking about who would be dumb enough to waste their time building something that brings such little value to one’s life.