Me and sally Desmoulins

In case you needed more proof that the internet was probably a mistake

This past Wednesday, I began my workday as I always do—making the rounds online, which, for me, includes LinkedIn. As anyone who uses LinkedIn will tell you, most of what happens there is pleasant but ultimately a waste of time.

If Twitter is a group of well-meaning people drowned out by sociopaths standing on rooftops and screaming at each other with megaphones, and TikTok is the attention span destroyer full of photogenic young people that every TV advertising executive wishes they’d been capable of creating themselves, then LinkedIn is the company-mandated outing that you reluctantly attend because, hey, at least it’s better than being at work.

But every once in a while, something special happens on LinkedIn.

Just imagine starting your day, sipping that all-important second cup of coffee, and finding this message from a complete stranger in your inbox:

Now, of course, I don’t know sally. sally, I quickly found out, had zero LinkedIn connections. I think it’s safe to say that no one knows sally—that sally is inherently unknowable. But that doesn’t mean I can’t attempt to find, in sally, a source of joy.

And I mean, this is one heck of an opening line. If someone came up and said this to me on the street? Well, actually, I’m sure I’d respond in much the same way I chose to respond on LinkedIn…

To which sally politely responded…

What a delightful interaction! I could have simply smiled and chosen to go about my day.

But where’s the fun in that? I figured sally is either an AI learning program of some sort, or a desperate dude somewhere trying to scam me into something I’ll later regret. Hopefully sally isn’t being forced into whatever this is at gunpoint! Regardless, I decided to poke around and see what would happen.

So I asked sally what it was that made me seem like a fine man who has an enjoyable life…

This is the point at which I knew I’d made the right choice.

Without even needing me to reply to that perfectly normal question, sally continued…

Wow indeed.

Now, let’s take a moment.

I have to apologize, dear reader, because unfortunately, I stopped taking screenshots at this point. I do, believe it or not, technically have a job.

This is unfortunate for at least two reasons. One, our conversation took some wild twists and turns from this point. And two…

sally Desmoulins no longer exists. The LinkedIn profile is gone. Our chat history is gone. Google ‘sally Desmoulins’ and you will find… nothing.

Yes, I have tried calling Sarah Koenig about this, and yes I do believe there will be a future season of Serial devoted entirely to sally. Only a matter of time.

sally asked me where I came from, and I said I came from a little town in England. Obviously not true, but no push-back from sally, who claimed to be from “New York, USA.” Spoken like a true New Yorker.

But when I checked sally’s profile, it listed North York, Ontario, Canada as the location. Hey! I thought. That’s a place I know very well! When I questioned sally about that discrepancy, however, I was told that sally had just touched down in North York, had in fact just gotten off the plane, and was very tired.

sally, you see, is both a beauty business owner and an investor. Obviously a very busy person. I told sally that the cuisine in North York is spectacular, and sally asked whether I could make any restaurant recommendations. I replied that the sandwiches at a place called Tim Horton’s are outstanding. And there, we found some common ground. sally is also a sandwich lover, it turns out, and believes bánh mì to be the world’s best sandwich. Fair enough, I think. It’s easily top five.

sally tried very hard to get me to use a messaging platform called Telegram, claiming it to be the only viable channel for communication going forward. Funny, I thought, since sally chose LinkedIn, rather than Vladimir Putin’s platform of choice, as the platform for initiating communication with me, a total stranger.

I told sally that I am not allowed to use any communication channels except for Viber and LinkedIn, and that “the rules are very strict.” Not true, of course, but I was hoping for at least a little sympathy, now that sally and I had confirmed our shared sandwich appreciation. None, however, was granted.

And, mysteriously, the conversation continued… not on Telegram, but on LinkedIn.

We spoke about the violence and riots commonly found in the streets of New York, USA. I asked sally to write me a postcard and send it in the mail since I can’t use Telegram, but sally said that we are simply too far away from one another for that. At one point I even offered to send sally money, to help with the beauty business, but was told that sally was not in a position to receive any money and would have to “consult with many stakeholders.”

And so, eventually, as all good things must, our brief time together came to an end.

But I’ll never stop wondering… what the fuck that was all about.

I mean imagine trying to explain anything about this situation to a human being in the 1950s. Or 60s. Heck, even most – if not all – of the 1990s. Think about any of the possible explanations you can come up with for the existence of sally Desmoulins, then reflect on those explanations for, I don’t know, even as little as five minutes.

What are we actually doing, anymore? What is any of this?

Your answer’s as good as mine.

Well, whatever it is, at least we can have a bit of fun while we’re doing it. Or at least I can.

So thank you, sally, wherever you are. It was fun while it lasted, wasn’t it?