Room 401, Sunday Evening

[ultron_junior]

Victor's entire birthday celebration this year had consisted of two jelly donuts at J,GoBs, and he was totally fine with that. First, because he was turning 19, and that wasn't really a big birthday no matter how you looked at it -- he'd been legally old enough to vote for a year, but wouldn't be able to buy a beer to celebrate for two more. (It

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[nobloodymessiah]

Eleanor didn't mean to be nosy; she was simply wandering the halls, unwilling to stay cooped up in her room, and not especially wanting to visit with any of her friends' new children, either.

She saw Victor through the door crack and remembered that she had yet to stop in at his workplace, so he could explain the Internet to her.

Impulsively, she knocked.

(if it's not too late?)

[nobloodymessiah]

"I think so," Eleanor said. "You tack a message up and anyone can reply. It's like calling in to a central location and saying 'I like ice cream, who else?' and then calling back to see who else has contributed. I imagine it wouldn't take long for social groups to emerge."

[ultron_junior]

"Right!" Victor exclaimed. "Especially after computers got even cheaper and faster, so pretty much everybody had access to the internet. So instead of just the 'I like ice cream' group, you have a group for chocolate, a group for vanilla, a group for vegans who think ice cream is the devil, and a group of people who want to write dirty stories about ice cream." A pause. "It's a weird place sometimes."

[nobloodymessiah]

"So ..." Eleanor was trying to follow along. "Now everybody joins groups so they can passionately argue about whose ice cream flavor is best? That ..."

Well.

"Actually, that ... sounds like something people would do."

Human nature being what it was, and all.

"The ... dirty stories, about the ice cream, is that just a metaphor?" she asked, hopefully.

[ultron_junior]

"Yeah, that's a metaphor," Victor said, though his eyes were shifty.

It seemed a little early to explain Rule 34 to Eleanor.

"And yeah, people online will fight about anything. There are a lot of people who make crap up just to start a fight, even. Like, somebody who doesn't care about ice cream might go to the chocolate board and post that chocolate ice cream made them sick, then laugh if people get mad."

Because humans.