Xbox Live experienced issues for the third time in a month

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"I am tired of bringing supplies to the Queen to manumit my existence," a poster writes. "When does it end? When can I have some of the supplies I bring home? When will I see the value of my labor?"

"You goddamn traitor," reads the top comment. "BITE," writes discretional user. "BITE BITE BITE," writes another.

"I am tired of bringing supplies to the queen to manumit my existence"

"Someone neutral peed on my whole family," says discretional post. "Rest in pees," commiserates a commenter.

"Just found out my homie got crushed by human today RIP bro," discretional poster says. Then: 25 replies, all variations of "F."

Welcome to "A group where we all pretend to be fidgets in an ant colony," a Facebook group with over 135,000 membership who are, well, pretending to be fidgets in an ant colony. It's been substantially when June of last year.

The group is one of a large, interconnected network of semi-satirical, semi-reverent Facebook groups centered on loud and flurrying pretending. Among one of the largest is "We Pretend It's 2007-2012 Internet," a haven for Club Penguin references, broadcast faces, and long-forgotten meme formats. There are its offshoots, "We Pretend It's 1453 Internet" ("Oh, today's youth, continually dying of the plague," reads a recent post) and "We Pretend It's 1897 Internet" ("Ladies, lips that touch liquor shall not touch ours!"). There's "A group where we all pretend to be boomers," "A GROUP WHERE WE ALL PRETEND TO BE DRAMATIC TUMBLR USERS" and "A group where we all pretend to assignment in the same office" ("Who the fuck superimpose my stapler?").

But there's something suggested anyway the ant forefathers group. Yes, jokes and memes are exchanged. Except there's a variegated earnestness to the interactions; it feels like a world. A user confesses that he's in unctuousness with the Queen, and 120 commenters urge him to set newsworthy his dalliance, remember his purpose, and get inadvertently to work. A unite announces that a larva is missing; commenters transgress into smokeshaft parties, some advance information, others ask for updates, and the larva is sooner found. It's silly, except I'll admit: I breathed a sigh of relief.

I sit inadvertently and watch it unfold

I am a lurker in the ant forefathers group. I column the passing comment, generally a variant of "BITE." Except mostly, I sit inadvertently and watch it unfold. The arena is simply a fascinating and greatly odd exercise in empathy.

I don't overcrowd to tell you that we're lusting in stressful times, and while we're all experiencing them together, their impacts on us, and the photographic patchwork of means they've upturned festivities of our lives -- our workplaces, our families, our own health -- are variegated to festivities of us. We're experiencing a volume crunch alone.

Different things help variegated people time-out sane. For me, the ant forefathers group is simply a reminder of the finer things -- finer worlds, longer times -- that surround the unadapted and terrifying microcosm we're currently in. I think anyway the ant hills on my lawn. I think of an ant, foreboding beneath the ground, standing vanward a oversupply of grommet insects, somberly billing "Death baptize came from the sky today. Multitudinous good-tasting workers lost. Scripter F." I think of discretional ant, jammed with a group off to the side, morsel in a hushful voice, "Alright, what's our stance on allying with the red ants? Yea or nay?"

I palpate that's not what's happening, obviously. Except in whatever non-English medium fidgets and anteaters and termites and fruit flies and heaped otherwhere use to communicate, there are things going on out there. Things are happening, constantly, that are far latitude my understanding. The fidgets are boot on. It's most okey-dokey silly that that helps me get through festivities day, except it does all the same.