I was added to a group chat. Nobody asked. My phone made a sound and I was in a room with nine Americans and a name at the top that said "THE BOYS 🏈🔥." I did not know four of them. Inside I said: I HAVE BEEN CONSCRIPTED INTO A COUNCIL WHOSE PURPOSE AND MEMBERSHIP HAVE NOT BEEN DISCLOSED TO ME. The first message I received was a photograph of a lawnmower with no caption. Eleven replies. Nobody asked what the lawnmower was. Everyone understood immediately. One man replied "LMAOOO" with four O's, and another replied "no way he did it again." He did it again. Somebody had done something again. With a lawnmower. Previously. I have never learned what happened. There is no way to ask. To ask would reveal that I am new, and I have been in this chat for fourteen months. Then I learned the rules. You do not say hello. There is no greeting. You simply begin, mid-thought, as though continuing a conversation that has been running since 2019, because it has. You do not answer questions directed at the group. Someone else will. If nobody does, the question dies, and nobody mourns it, and the man who asked it will bring it up again in six weeks with no reference to the first attempt. You do not leave. Leaving generates a system message. The system message is visible to all. There is no discreet exit. The only way out is death, and even then someone will post in it. Inside I said: THERE IS NO GATE OUT. THE WALLS FACE INWARD. I said nothing for four months. Then one night at 11 PM, a man posted "anybody up." Two words. No question mark. Three people replied within a minute. Then a fourth. Then they talked for two hours about nothing. I understood then what the chat is for. It is not for information. It has never carried information. It is a light left on in a window so that a man who cannot sleep can see that the house is still there. Last month my father was ill. I did not say so. I would not say so. At 1 AM I typed "anybody up." Four replies in ninety seconds. Nobody asked why. Nobody asked if I was alright. They simply began talking about a football game from 2011 and an argument they have been having about it for a decade. They talked until 3 AM. Then one of them wrote, "night, brother." Just that. To me. Singular. He knew. They all knew. Nobody said a word about it and nobody ever will and I have never in my life been held so carefully by people who refused to admit they were doing it.