You are not alone in your loneliness

Hello.

I'd like to introduce you to someone.

This is Jomny.

That's "Jonny" but spelled
accidentally with an "m,"

in case you were wondering,

because we're not all perfect.

Jomny is an alien

who has been sent to earth
with a mission to study humans.

Jomny is feeling lost and alone
and far from home,

and I think we've all felt this way.

Or, at least I have.

I wrote this story about this alien
at a moment in my life

when I was feeling particularly alien.

I had just moved to Cambridge
and started my doctoral program at MIT,

and I was feeling intimidated and isolated
and very much like I didn't belong.

But I had a lifeline of sorts.

See, I was writing jokes
for years and years

and sharing them on social media,

and I found that I was turning
to doing this more and more.

Now, for many people,
the internet can feel like a lonely place.

It can feel like this,

a big, endless, expansive void

where you can constantly call out to it
but no one's ever listening.

But I actually found a comfort
in speaking out to the void.

I found, in sharing
my feelings with the void,

eventually the void started to speak back.

And it turns out that the void
isn't this endless lonely expanse at all,

but instead it's full of
all sorts of other people,

also staring out into it
and also wanting to be heard.

Now, there have been many bad things
that have come from social media.

I'm not trying to dispute that at all.

To be online at any given point
is to feel so much sadness

and anger and violence.

It can feel like the end of the world.

Yet, at the same time, I'm conflicted

because I can't deny the fact
that so many of my closest friends

are people that I had met
originally online.

And I think that's partly because
there's this confessional nature

to social media.

It can feel like you are writing
in this personal, intimate diary

that's completely private,

yet at the same time you want
everyone in the world to read it.

And I think part of that, the joy of that

is that we get to experience things
from perspectives from people

who are completely
different from ourselves,

and sometimes that's a nice thing.

For example, when I first joined Twitter,

I found that so many of the people
that I was following

were talking about mental health
and going to therapy

in ways that had none of the stigma
that they often do

when we talk about these issues in person.

Through them, the conversation
around mental health was normalized,

and they helped me realize
that going to therapy was something

that would help me as well.

Now, for many people,

it sounds like a scary idea
to be talking about all these topics

so publicly and so openly on the internet.

I feel like a lot of people
think that it is a big, scary thing

to be online if you're not
already perfectly and fully formed.

But I think the internet can be
actually a great place to not know,

and I think we can
treat that with excitement,

because to me there's something
important about sharing your imperfections

and your insecurities
and your vulnerabilities

with other people.

(Laughter)

Now, when someone shares
that they feel sad or afraid

or alone, for example,

it actually makes me feel less alone,

not by getting rid of any of my loneliness

but by showing me that I am not alone

in feeling lonely.

And as a writer and as an artist,

I care very much about making
this comfort of being vulnerable

a communal thing, something that we
can share with each other.

I'm excited about
externalizing the internal,

about taking those invisible personal
feelings that I don't have words for,

holding them to the light,
putting words to them,

and then sharing them with other people

in the hopes that it might help them
find words to find their feelings as well.

Now, I know that sounds like a big thing,

but ultimately I'm interested
in putting all these things

into small, approachable packages,

because when we can hide them
into these smaller pieces,

I think they are easier to approach,
I think they're more fun.

I think they can more easily help us
see our shared humanness.

Sometimes that takes the form
of a short story,

sometimes that takes the form of
a cute book of illustrations, for example.

And sometimes that takes the form

of a silly joke
that I'll throw on the internet.

For example, a few months ago,
I posted this app idea

for a dog-walking service

where a dog shows up at your door
and you have to get out of the house

and go for a walk.

(Laughter)

If there are app developers
in the audience,

please find me after the talk.

Or, I like to share every time
I feel anxious about sending an email.

When I sign my emails "Best,"

it's short for "I am trying my best,"

which is short for "Please don't hate me,
I promise I'm trying my best!"

Or my answer to the classic icebreaker,

if I could have dinner with anyone,
dead or alive, I would.

I am very lonely.

(Laughter)

And I find that when
I post things like these online,

the reaction is very similar.

People come together to share a laugh,

to share in that feeling,

and then to disburse just as quickly.

(Laughter)

Yes, leaving me once again alone.

But I think sometimes these
little gatherings can be quite meaningful.

For example, when I graduated
from architecture school

and I moved to Cambridge,

I posted this question:

How many people in your life
have you already had

your last conversation with?

And I was thinking about
my own friends who had moved away

to different cities
and different countries, even,

and how hard it would be
for me to keep in touch with them.

But other people started replying
and sharing their own experiences.

Somebody talked about a family member
they had a falling out with.

Someone talked about a loved one
who had passed away

quickly and unexpectedly.

Someone else talked
about their friends from school

who had moved away as well.

But then something really nice
started happening.

Instead of just replying to me,

people started replying to each other,

and they started to talk to each other
and share their own experiences

and comfort each other

and encourage each other
to reach out to that friend

that they hadn't spoken to in a while

or that family member
that they had a falling out with.

And eventually, we got
this little tiny microcommunity.

It felt like this support group formed

of all sorts of people coming together.

And I think every time we post online,

every time we do this, there's a chance

that these little
microcommunities can form.

There's a chance that all sorts
of different creatures

can come together and be drawn together.

And sometimes, through
the muck of the internet,

you get to find a kindred spirit.

Sometimes that's
in the reading the replies

and the comments sections and finding
a reply that is particularly kind

or insightful or funny.

Sometimes that's
in going to follow someone

and seeing that they
already follow you back.

And sometimes that's in looking at someone
that you know in real life

and seeing the things that you write
and the things that they write

and realizing that you share so many
of the same interests as they do,

and that brings them
closer together to you.

Sometimes, if you're lucky,

you get to meet another alien.

[when two aliebns find each other
in a strange place,

it feels a litle more like home]

But I am worried, too,
because as we all know,

the internet for the most part
doesn't feel like this.

We all know that for the most part,

the internet feels like a place
where we misunderstand each other,

where we come into conflict
with each other,

where there's all sorts of confusion
and screaming and yelling and shouting,

and it feels like
there's too much of everything.

It feels like chaos,

and I don't know how to square away
the bad parts with the good,

because as we know and as we've seen,

the bad parts can really, really hurt us.

It feels to me that the platforms
that we use to inhabit these online spaces

have been designed
either ignorantly or willfully

to allow for harassment and abuse,
to propagate misinformation,

to enable hatred and hate speech
and the violence that comes from it,

and it feels like
none of our current platforms

are doing enough
to address and to fix that.

But still, and maybe
probably unfortunately,

I'm still drawn to these online spaces,
as many others are,

because sometimes it just feels
like that's where all the people are.

And I feel silly

and stupid sometimes

for valuing these small moments
of human connection in times like these.

But I've always operated under this idea

that these little moments of humanness
are not superfluous.

They're not retreats
from the world at all,

but instead they're the reasons
why we come to these spaces.

They are important and vital
and they affirm and they give us life.

And they are these tiny,
temporary sanctuaries

that show us that we are not
as alone as we think we are.

And so yes, even though life is bad
and everyone's sad

and one day we're all going to die --

[look. life is bad. everyones sad.

We're all gona die, but i alredy bought
this inflatable bouncey castle

so are u gona take Ur shoes off or not]

I think the inflatable metaphorical
bouncy castle in this case

is really our relationships
and our connections to other people.

And so one night,

when I was feeling particularly sad
and hopeless about the world,

I shouted out to the void,

to the lonely darkness.

I said, "At this point,
logging on to social media

feels like holding someone's hand
at the end of the world."

And this time, instead of
the void responding,

it was people who showed up,

who started replying to me and then
who started talking to each other,

and slowly this little
tiny community formed.

Everybody came together to hold hands.

And in these dangerous and unsure times,

in the midst of it all,

I think the thing that we have
to hold on to is other people.

And I know that is a small thing
made up of small moments,

but I think it is one tiny,
tiny sliver of light

in all the darkness.

Thank you.

(Applause)

Thank you.

(Applause)