I Have Spent Three Hundred Dollars on a Bar That Resets

I am fine. I would like the record to reflect that I am fine. I would also like the record to reflect that I have spent three hundred and twelve dollars on a website called boring.now, that I check it more than I check my email, and that I cannot fully explain why.

The first time I bumped, I was on a bus. I had been reading an article in this same publication about a man named TrustFundTrevor and the website he had nearly conquered. I laughed at it. I texted a screenshot to a friend. He said “lol” and I went back to my book. Forty minutes later I opened the website on my phone and bumped the bar one dollar.

That was on April fifth. It is now April twenty-fifth. I have, in the intervening twenty days, bumped the bar three hundred and twelve more times. I do not buy bundles. I bump one dollar at a time. Each individual bump moves the bar zero point zero one of a percent. Three hundred and twelve dollars produces, in aggregate, three point one two percent of forward motion.

The bar is currently at, let me check, eight point zero three percent. So my contribution is approximately one third of where the bar currently is. The other two thirds are other people. I do not know who they are. I have read about some of them.

What it is for

I am a project manager. I am thirty-one. I have a fiance and a dog and an apartment with a south-facing window. I am, by most reasonable measures, a person who has her life together. I have a savings account. I have a Roth. I read books that people would describe as “literary.” I do not buy lottery tickets. I do not gamble. I have, in my entire life, placed exactly two sports bets, both with friends, both for twenty dollars, both of which I lost without complaint.

I do not know how to explain why bumping the bar feels different from those things. I have tried. The closest I can get is this: the bar is the only thing I pay for that does exactly what it says it will. It moves zero point zero one of a percent. It always moves. There is no fine print. There is no surprise renewal. There is no “oh, that wasn't included.” The receipt arrives. The bar moves. That is the entire transaction, top to bottom.

The pattern

I check it three times a day. Morning, after my walk, before bed. I do not bump every time I check. I check twice as often as I bump. The checking is its own thing. I refresh the page and the percentage is slightly higher than last time and somebody in the feed has done something I did not do, and I read the names. I am familiar now with the names.

“I do not know how to explain why bumping the bar feels different. The closest I can get is this: it is the only thing I pay for that does exactly what it says it will.”

I know who diamond_hands_69 is. I do not literally know him, obviously. But I know the shape of his bumping. I know who ferrari_owner_btw is. I have a theory about kettle_watcher. I have, I am sorry to admit, formed an opinion about longtime_lurker. I have never spoken to any of them. I will never meet any of them. I will, on April twenty-eighth, check whether ferrari_owner_btw closed the cycle. The countdown says fifty four hours. I have a guess.

What my fiance thinks

He thinks it is silly. He thinks it is, more specifically, silly in a way that does not particularly bother him. He once asked, sincerely, whether I considered it a hobby. I said yes. He said okay and left the room. I have, in the intervening week, considered whether the answer was the right one. I think it was. I think it is, technically, a hobby. It is a hobby that costs me about fifteen dollars a week and provides, in exchange, the small ongoing knowledge that a number is going up because of me, and that the number will reset, and that I will start it going up again.

What I would like the record to reflect

That I am fine. That my finances are fine. That I have not sold any plasma. That my fiance and I do not fight about this. That I have not stopped reading books. That I am not, as a friend asked once, in some kind of crisis. That the cycle is going to reset on April twenty-eighth, or possibly the twenty-ninth, and when it does my contribution will be erased, and I will return to the bar, and I will move it zero point zero one of a percent. That this is a hobby. That I do not think anyone is hurt by it. That when I am at the bar I am not at any of the other places I might be at, and most of those other places are louder. That the bar is quiet. That this is, in fact, the website.

The author asked to be identified only by the handle she uses on the site. She does not bump while at work. She wanted us to make that clear.