You’re Invited! (On Getting Hacked)

I was standing in a bar
And watching all the people there
Oh, the loneliness in this world
Well, it’s just not fair
Hey, love and mercy, that’s what we need tonight

— Brian Wilson, Love and Mercy

——

My email address was recently hacked. One day, I started getting all kinds of puzzled texts and emails from people wondering if an email they had received from me was legit. The email contained a picture of an envelope with the words “You’re Invited” on it. Underneath was a green button you could click on to open the “invitation.” “It didn’t seem like the kind of thing you would send,” many people said. “But I just wanted to be sure.”

I spent a few days responding to queries like this, assuring people that they were right to be suspicious, that I was attempting to deal with the issue, that I was not planning some epic event, to not click on the link, etc. Among the interesting things about the experience was the many brief interactions I had with people that I hadn’t heard from in years. Most went something like, “yeah, I figured it was spam, hope all is well” and that was about it. But some led to a few follow up texts/emails. One even led to a plan to meet in person later this year. Who knew getting hacked could result in some intriguing reconnections? 

There were also a number of people who seemed genuinely thrilled by the prospect of being invited to something. “I’ve clicked on the link a number of times, but I can’t seem to access the invitation. Please send again! Whatever it is, I’m looking forward to it!” And other such messages. Often these were people who, as far as I knew, lived nowhere near me and who I hadn’t seen in many years or connected with socially… well, ever. It made me a little sad to think of the loneliness that might be lurking behind comments like this. 

It also angered me. The whole vast ecosystem of online sludge conjured by words like “hackers” and “spam” is the the price we all pay for the convenience of being online, but gosh is it irritating to think of this army of people out there devoted to coming up with ever more creative ways to corrupt and infect and degrade and compromise. And it seems so grossly predatory to use something like an “invitation.” It’s preying upon people’s desire to be included, to connect with others, to be part of something beyond all our solitary screens. It seemed to me that it was almost a weaponization of the plague of loneliness that has descended upon the West in recent years.

Somewhat embarrassingly, didn’t know that Brian Wilson wrote the lyrics above until a few weeks ago (I was never a huge Beach Boys fan). I encountered Love and Mercy via My Morning Jacket’s cover of the song. I wasn’t standing in a bar, but I was “watching all the people” that poured into my inbox for half a week or so. And, like Wilson, I was struck by the loneliness in this world. Wilson knows of what he speaks. His story was, in many ways, a terribly tragic one. From the heights of fame, he plunged into the depths of addiction, mental health crises of various kinds, bankruptcy, poverty, isolation and loneliness. He recovered, a bit, toward the end of his life. But his story never really ceased to be a sad one. I was reading a bit about him this morning and was struck by a period in his life where he rarely came out of his bedroom. For how many people, I wondered, is this now normal?

The causes of our loneliness are myriad and have been discussed endlessly. It’s smartphones, it’s the fallout of COVID, it’s the decline of institutions, it’s secularization, it’s the algorithmic incentives of the digital age, it’s political polarization, it’s AI, it’s all of these things and more. And of course many are eager to prescribe their remedies. Tighter restrictions on social media. Maybe some legislative tweaks and incentives here and there. More community events. Various campaigns and initiatives to somehow nudge human beings off their screens and back toward each other. 

But surely Brian Wilson sang the deeper truth behind all our more pragmatic attempts at social engineering. Love and mercy are what we need tonight. Love to acknowledge that we are not machines to be optimized but human beings, created in love and for love. And mercy for all the ways in which we find love difficult, all the ways we fracture and fray, and drift away from each other. I suspect, in the end, there are very few problems in our world that could not be solved, or at least ameliorated, by leaning into love and mercy. 

Don’t click on any “invitations” that show up in your inbox looking anything like the image above. But do invite someone to do something in the real world. It doesn’t have to be a party. It could be something as simple as a cup of coffee. Some small opportunity to extend love or mercy or both. It’s what we need tonight. Maybe throw on some Brian Wilson in the background.