Nobody Likes Spock
By Sarah Colón
Spock scrolls through his Facebook feed in the early hours of the morning. He hasn’t been sleeping well, and the blue light from his phone shining upward reveals dark circles around his eyes.
Today, someone is posting a long description of the origins of the virus. “PROOF that it was created by Chinese Communist conspiracists who want to take down our government,” it says: “The virus has been present in a LAB previously to it ever getting out in the public. It originated in CHINA. A certain wealthy philanthropist stands to gain a lot of money by inventing a vaccine. FOLLOW THE MONEY, PEOPLE.”
Spock springs into action, posting helpful comments. “Perhaps you should look up the word proof in a suitable dictionary. Your use of the word in this context shows you have gravely misunderstood its meaning. Your post does not include sources or footnotes, but I can say with certainty that this particular virus was only ‘present in a lab’ in fecal samples of bat guano. The philanthropist you mention is actually projected to lose billions of dollars on vaccine research. Hope this helps.” He includes links to relevant scholarly articles.
His comment gets one like and five angry faces, followed by several comments calling him a communist, an elitist. He scratches his left ear. He’s not as vulnerable to this stuff as most people, but the human half of him still feels hurt. He writes a post on his own wall about fact checking.
One of his Facebook friends PMs him. “What was that post about?” she asks aggressively.
“Fact checking,” he replies.
“Yeah, but in response to what?” she asks.
He sees what she is driving at. She wants to know his political stance on the subject. “In response to statements that were not fact-checked,” he clarifies, helpfully.
She unfriends and blocks him.
Today, the leader of the country tweets he has the virus. Spock reads another post by a documentary maker that says it’s probably a lie; this particular leader lies all the time, so the most likely truth is that he is lying to gain traction in the upcoming election. Spock corrects him that this is the least likely of possible scenarios, considering the number of additional people—staffers, housekeepers, and medical professionals—who would have to be involved in the lie.
His comment is ignored, so he posts it on his own wall.
“Dude, whose side are you on?”
“Defending the liar, huh? WOW this is beneath even your low standards.”
“COMMUNIST FASCIST!!”
“Clearly I cannot be both a communist and a fascist,” Spock replies, “the two ideologies being in polar opposition.”
“Then what, exactly, is your position?” another lady comments.
Spock does a facepalm. He knows he is sometimes too slow to read the hidden messages and nonverbal cues in language and social situations, but he realizes he should have understood this sooner. People want to know which side he is on. He quickly composes a post to remedy this. He types it in all caps, as he has seen others do when they want to be especially assertive or clear.
“I AM ON THE SIDE OF THE FACTS.”
“Which facts?”
“All of them.”
“Okay, but what about when the facts contradict each other?”
“Your language is misleading. If two pieces of information contradict each other, at least one of them must be false. False information is, by definition, not fact. Therefore, it is impossible for two facts to contradict each other. In the scenario you suggest, there exists either one or zero facts. If there is one fact, I would be in agreement with the one fact, or, if there are zero facts, I would be in agreement with neither of them, instead taking the side of the omitted, but still extant, fact.”
“DUDE.”
“Way to avoid answering the question.”
“This guy is a coward.”
“WHICH CANDIDATE DO YOU SUPPORT?”
Several memes pop up next: a picture of a dog licking its own eyeball captioned “Durrrrrr,” a GIF of Charlie Chaplain goose-stepping in parody of Hitler, and another of a well-dressed black woman spitting the contents of a wine glass straight at the camera.
Spock is unsure what to make of these, but he has learned from a great deal of time spent with humans that, when involved in confusing social situations, mimicking the behavior of those around him is usually the answer. He posts a GIF of Ace Ventura wearing a pink leotard and tutu, running with a football.
“WTF?” someone asks.
“Is there some hidden meaning here? What are you trying to get at?”
Spock knows the answer to this one, having discussed it thoroughly with a coworker. “This image is a well-known reference to a popular movie from the 1990s about a pet detective who uses unorthodox research methods and has a particular competence with adjusting the muscles of his face. It is humorous because in the 90s this outfit was considered feminine, subverting the expectation of male/female costumes, accompanied by the comedic tactic of adjusting facial muscles into unnatural positions.”
Spock is pleased with himself. It took him years of research to understand humor and jokes, but now he feels he has a grasp on it. He even knows that there is a specific unnatural adjustment of facial muscles that is not included in the category of comedy that includes severely downturned mouth corners accompanied by flexion of the neck ligaments, strong tension between the eyebrows, and short, choking sounds. This particular expression is sometimes called an “ugly cry” and is not intended to be funny. The expected reaction to the ugly cry is to pat the person on the back and say there twice, followed by it’s not so bad. This is one situation where lying is acceptable, because humans with their neck ligaments tightly flexed are temporarily in a state of reduced intellectual capacity, so lying to them that it’s not bad helps relieve the neck tension and return them to their usual, albeit low, level of mental acuity.
He considers writing a post analyzing Ace Ventura’s facial arrangement in comparison to the ugly cry, but decides against it. Most humans have an uncanny ability to know what facial expressions signify without explanation or analysis.
Someone says he has Asperger’s. He thanks them, having met several autistic persons who have high levels of logic for a human, but adds that it’s unfair to compare him to even this best type of human, his abilities being so markedly different from theirs.
Someone calls him a troll. Someone else accuses him of making fun of autistic persons. He assures both of them that he lacks the cruel impulses to engage in either activity, cruelty being motivated entirely by emotion.
This inspires him to compose another long post about the baser emotions, like terror, rage, and hatred, and compare those responses with the logical, thereby drawing the conclusion that they are all the product of illogic. Terror, rage, and hatred, he posits, are the emotions of idiocy. This is not a condemnation, he explains. Humans, who evolved without discarding their lizard brains, are always going to be susceptible to this part of themselves when faced with something they don’t understand. The remedy, however, is to know that this is happening and then seek to learn more about it, thereby circumventing the emotional response and re-wiring it into the logical portion of their brains.
He has solved both stupidity and negative emotions in one fell swoop. Feeling as though he has just unlocked the secret, hidden meaning of human existence, the answer to all philosophical questions and difficulties, he sits back and waits for the likes to come pouring in.
Sarah Colón is a poet, fiction writer, and educator from the American West who spent her childhood in Montana as a second-generation member of a religious cult preparing for impending nuclear disaster. She currently teaches high school and lives with her partner and their blended family of six children in Largo, Florida. Previous publications include The Examined Life, Just Words Fallacy, Madness Muse Press and Flash Fiction, and work is forthcoming in The Account, Swamp Ape Review, and 32 Poems.