“I can hear you; can you hear me?”

This is the sound of modern frustration.

“Hello? I’m here, are you there?”

Dumb question, right? I mean, yes, they are obviously still there, having not spontaneously combusted into a pile of ash or vaporized into a pool of bong water. You’re both very much in the same place you were when the cell phone went silent. Your body remains in its physical form wherever that was before the call blipped out, stranding you in the void of disconnect. But suddenly you have no contact. You’re exposed and immediately feeling unsecure and lacking a healthy sense of existence.

Right?

If there’s no one there to share the event, then it may as well have never happened because, in this on-demand era of show and tell, there’s little value to anything you do if you do not have someone there to validate it. To give it meaning.

They say that to survive, we need companionship as much as we need food and water.

Remember the dude on YouTube who saw the double rainbow and was so deeply impacted by its beauty that he wept hysterically? He was alone and isolated. But he had his cellphone, which had a camera, a conduit with which to capture the inspirational moments of pure emotion and upload for the world to see. Without that device, no other soul would have been exposed to what he experienced, the indescribable perfection he could share with humanity. And because of this portable partner, his epiphany became one of the most-watched YouTube videos in history, spreading joy and visual magnificence to the masses, culminating in millions of giggles.

And a few tears.

By the way, I wonder if that guy was stoned.