‘HASHTAG LEARNING’ — a short story

Most of my students are stupid. It’s a combination of being poorly read and having no natural intellectual curiosity. They’re never willing to question anything or come up with their own ideas. For them, academic work is just collating ideas posted online by other poorly read, lazy people. 

When I give my lectures I know none of them are listening. A few times I’ve said wildly inaccurate things to see if anyone will notice. Nobody ever has. They’re busy scrolling or typing on their phones. I’m sure they only bother coming so they can upload a picture to their social media #learning.

I’ve been vocally opposed to social media from the beginning. Nobody says anything profound in two hundred and eighty characters. There were a few colleagues at University who were also non-believers but since global diplomacy has moved online even they’ve caved to the pressure. Now, everything they say is prefaced with I read this on twitter yesterday, or this came up in my feed. Feed, like they’re pigs with their snout in a trough.

Reluctantly, I signed up. I didn’t want to lose face so I created an anonymous profile. My handle is @TheDogsBellocks, which is funny because I’m a behavioural psychologist. I followed all the worthwhile suggested profiles. Yes: Robert Peston, Nick Robinson, Hugo Rifkind. No: Selena Gomez, Rihanna, Kendall Jenner. 

In the first few weeks I found it pretty boring. It was just the same people saying the same things over and over again, a brainless mix of outrage and self-promotion. It made sense now that conversations amongst staff in the department had become uninspired and cyclical if this was their source of intellectual stimulation.

A month in, I was thinking about accepting that it was just another bullshit cultural zeitgeist moment that I was too bright to be fooled by, when one of my students emailed me about an essay deadline and I noticed there was a link to her twitter account in the email tag. I clicked on it. 

@NinaSecondSex’s timeline was predictably short on nuance for a second year University student. She retweeted fatalistic left-wing articles, invites to activist meetings in safe spaces, and online petitions against plastic. There were, though, a few glimpses of more depth. She made a joke about Monica Lewinsky turning Republican because the Democrats left a bad taste in her mouth. Funny. 

Nina Lowe had not stood out to me before then. I barely recognised her from her profile picture.  Taken offhand – or painstakingly made to look like it was - she was wrapped in Saturday morning white bed sheets. Her hair was tussled, her skin was luminous - a filter? - and she was smiling broadly at the person behind the camera. From my vague recollection of her in class she didn’t look that good. 

The next time I saw her in a lecture I made a closer assessment. She wore bulky army boots and a scruffy, ill-fitting fur coat, with her whitewashed hair pulled haphazardly into a ponytail. She’d dyed her hair too many times and it was a little lank. As with most of her contemporaries, she seemed to be willing herself to be unattractive. Her skin was blotchy from too much make-up and alcohol, but still youthful. Those issues would iron themselves out as she matured. Overall, I decided that she was more attractive than I had previously given her credit for. 

I got into the habit of checking her timeline every day. She’d tweet saying that she was blessed or excited about something then come into class and look bored and miserable for an hour. I would’ve lost interest but every few days she’d tweet an off-colour joke that I found funny in spite of myself. It was those little sparks of personality, contrary to the standard student bilge she posted, that intrigued me and I decided that I’d send her a private message. I wanted to know who was really behind the timeline.

I started by saying that I was in her behavioural psychology class. She replied within minutes asking who I was. I made a joke about being shy, and said that I’d noticed her and thought she looked fun. Fun is the sort of non-word – like good, nice, or cool – that students use when their brain can’t verbalise what they’re actually feeling. 

As expected, this hit the right spot. I suppose she must’ve been flattered. Ego is king in her generation. If you massage that then they’ll put aside any other qualms they might have, like whether or not someone is really who they say they are. She didn’t press me on who I was, and kept messaging me.  

Despite her automatic belief that I was who I said I was, I still wanted to bolster my credibility, just in case for whatever reason the ego rubbing wore off and rational thought kicked in. I dropped in a few nuggets of information into our chat that only someone in her class would know. Which student was the loser, who was the pedant. She seemed to enjoy my observations and responded quickly with haha and lol. 

I told her that I was in the University sports association. There were enough club members in the class for this not to pin down my identity too closely. You could pick them out because they came to class with hoodies branded with silly nicknames. Most of them were objectively attractive, in a brawny sort of way. This wasn’t quite the persona I wanted to go for but they were popular with the girls and I didn’t want her to think I was a spotty geek behind a keyboard. It would do for now and she seemed fairly impressed when I told her.

After this initial exchange, I messaged her the following evening, then the evening after that, and eventually we were messaging each other every day. 

She talked about the usual banal things that students talked about – part-time work, who had chlamydia, her plan to teach English in Cambodia after graduation – but she was also sarcastic and sharply dismissive of her classmates. I was my funniest and wittiest self in the messages, a person I had no impetus to showcase in real life anymore. After a week of messaging, the tone turned flirtatious and we’d message late into the evenings.

She became a welcome diversion from my own circle. Colleagues spoke about buying second homes, having kitchens refurbished, getting divorced. Friends moaned about turning forty. My wife spoke a lot about ingrained patriarchy and I nodded and agreed at the right times - yes dear - but was ultimately uninspired. Nina’s light and irreverent messages became the highlight of my day.  

She began to make more effort with her appearance in class. Her make-up was a little heavier around the eyes and her lipstick a little brighter. She flicked her hair around more, in the way that women do when they’re trying to be attractive. It pleased me that she was starting to embrace femininity given the right encouragement.

I wanted to draw her out on what she thought about me, Professor Larsen. This had to be done subtly. After one of my classes, I messaged her saying that Prof Larsen was boring. I had overheard my students say this about me. I assumed they didn’t like my use of complex sentences, and would’ve preferred if all of the questions I asked could be answered with a yes or no. This dislike they verbalised as boring, which was their catch all term for anything too challenging. Anyway, however unfounded or lazily expressed the criticism was, it was a criticism I assumed that she’d be familiar with amongst her contemporaries.

She replied with two words: Love Larsen. 

I read it over and over. Love Larsen. I wasn’t naïve enough to believe that she loved me in the true sense of the word but it meant that she was on my side. She got me. It gave our dialogue a new credibility; she liked the person in the messages and she liked me in real life. This wasn’t just a fantasy. This was real.

When I went home that night my wife came into my study. I was at my desk waiting for a reply from Nina and I quickly minimised twitter and pulled up a tab on Deleuze. She crouched behind me, resting her chin on my shoulder. You work too much, she said. 

She wrapped her arms around my waist and kept them there for a while. Dinner will be ready soon, she said. I couldn’t be away from twitter for the time it took to eat dinner, so I told her I’d have something later. Don’t be too late, she said, kissing me on the head like my mother.

We’d been married for a decade. At the beginning of our marriage we fucked at least once a day but that had become once every six months, maximum. That sexual energy doesn’t die, it just becomes uninterested in your wife. It’s an unfashionable idea, but I believe a man has sexual urges that have to be met. Women are not the same. They need intimacy and it doesn’t need to be sexual. Men need sex – with or without intimacy – and if they’re not getting it at home then they’ll get it elsewhere.

Despite the lack of sex in our marriage, I’d never cheated on my wife. I’d resisted my natural urges for her sake. I loved her and I entered into this marriage thinking that it would last for life. There might be an affair or two in my late forties but other than that we were in it together. She loved me, that much was clear. She was always there to listen to my problems, always there to help me when I needed it. I never felt unsure of her. She was never unfathomable with respect to her feelings for me. I had thought it was that sureness, that definiteness in my wife, that had changed my sexual feelings towards her. In this way, I felt culpable for the lack of sex. I had thought that my attitude towards her was wrong. What I started to realise, though, as I began to feel those urges towards Nina, that it was my wife, not me, who hadn’t kept up their side of the marriage bargain. At the church altar, I had not promised to become a eunuch. 

I didn’t think of Nina sexually when I first messaged her but naturally the mind wanders to it. I imagined her replying to me from bed. She’d be in a thin, oversized T-shirt, nothing on underneath, with her laptop on her knees. She’d be smirking and laughing at my replies. It was a thought that I enjoyed sitting at my desk at home. At first I felt guilty thinking about her like that, from an age difference perspective. But she’s twenty – I double-checked her birthday with registry – and I’m only thirty-seven, so it’s completely legal. 

When she asked me if I wanted to meet her for a drink I knew that I would go. I suggested a bar on the opposite side of town from the University where there was less chance we’d be spotted by other students. I told my wife I was going for a drink with a work colleague and that I’d probably be home late, and that if it was too late then I might stay at their house rather than disturb her when she was sleeping. I rarely socialised with colleagues and I’m not sure she believed me. At that point I was being driven by the carnal male urge and I didn’t care if she was suspicious. As I left, she told me to have a good time, and not to worry about staying out late. It would be chivalrous to suggest I felt guilty, but I didn’t.

Arriving early at the bar, I took a seat in a corner where I could see the door. I had a few beers to ease the nervous excitement. To say I felt like a priapic teenager again would not be a misrepresentation. 

When she came through the door she looked unusually attractive. Her hair was down and lightly waved about her shoulders. She wore a dark green chiffon dress and a cropped leather jacket. Her army boots struck the expected androgynous note, but she was still pretty in spite of that.

She bought a drink and sat down at a table near the bar. I watched her type a message and it popped up in my twitter notifications: Place is dead. On your way?

I went to the toilet. I was getting cold feet. Was I risking too much? It was possible to back out now and nobody need know that this had ever happened. She’d feel rejected but she’d get over it. Then I thought about my wife, the lack of sex, and the suffocating monotony of everything. This was an opportunity and I had to take it. 

When I came back she wasn’t sitting at the table. My heart sunk for a moment, thinking that I’d blown it, but then I saw her through the window sitting on the benches in front of the pub smoking a cigarette.

I went outside and walked up to her. She smiled at me, blowing out a long stream of smoke into the air. Oddly, she didn’t look surprised. She just smiled and waved like someone would at their next door neighbour. Not the greeting for someone you’d been playing digital footsie with for weeks.

Then I realised that she hadn’t clicked. I – Professor Larsen – had never crossed her mind as the person she’d been messaging for weeks. Even when I was standing in front of her she never considered me in that way. I’d have to spell it out. I’m the man you’re waiting for.

She asked me if I was joking I said no. She looked perplexed, which was not the response I’d hoped for. She dropped her cigarette on the ground and rubbed it out with her foot. I explained that I had enjoyed our conversations. I reminded her of the things we’d joked about. If I could get her over the initial shock of it, I knew she’d see the funny side. 

She didn’t reply immediately, but just looked at me, with an unreadable expression, thinking up her response. She started by asking me why I’d lied, then asked why I’d thought my behaviour was appropriate, and it continued from there. As she spoke, I realised that this had been a mistake. She seemed angry, not in love. I tried to reason with her. The more I tried, the more indignant she became. 

She started shouting. She called me deceitful, and creepy, and said something about how old I was. I’m only thirty-seven, I told her. You’re in a position of power, she said. It was as if she thought that me standing in front of her for a few hours a week, talking about subjects she probably couldn’t comprehend, meant I was her minder. 

Other people smoking outside the pub started watching us, listening to her rail at me. I asked her to keep her voice down and she came closer to me, eyes wide with anger, and told me to fuck off. She didn’t seem flattered by the attention, as I expected she would be. I should’ve just walked away, but I started to worry about my job and my marriage. I needed to mollify her. Leaving things this way was too messy, dangerous even.

Putting my hand on her arm was a wrong move. It was supposed to be a placating gesture. Touch so often appeals to women. Like a reflex, she flicked the drink in her hand over my face. Sweet, sticky cider. As I wiped the fizz out of my eyes I saw her walk on to the street, away from the pub. 

When I got back home I parked on the opposite side of the street. My wife was visible through the kitchen window. Watching her, unseen, I felt an unexpected surge of love. Things weren’t really so bad between us. My wife wasn’t over-reactive, dismissive, and puerile like Nina. She was attentive and considerate. I remembered her putting her arms around my chest moments after I’d sent a message to Nina. Thinking of this didn’t make me feel guilty, as such, but more a sense of good fortune in my steady and knowable wife. I realised then that the upside of this altercation was that it had shown me exactly how lucky I was in my marriage. My wife was a woman and Nina was yet to grow up to be one. I decided I’d make the effort. I’d put more into my marriage.  

Sitting in the car, I deleted my twitter account. There was no way the University could prove it was me. I could just deny all knowledge. I met her at the pub by accident and she’d mistaken me for someone else. That was believable. Nina was just a student and I had years of good behaviour behind me in the department. It would take brass neck, but deny, deny, deny. I rubbed the last of what I could of the beer off my jacket, but as I reached to open the car door I saw someone else in the kitchen window. At first, I couldn’t make out who it was, I could just see the side of their body. They moved further in to view, closer to my wife. It was a man I didn’t recognise. My wife put her arm around him and pulled his body to her. They were laughing, faces close, then he moved his face down, and they kissed, right there by the window.