I am the Goddess of Discord.

Contrary to popular belief, I do not create most human problems.

Humanity appears fully capable of doing that without assistance.

I mostly point at existing problems and ask:

Have we considered making this everyone’s issue?

Nyx. Primordial Goddess of Night. Ancient beyond comprehension. Terrifying without effort. Capable of ending arguments by entering the room.

Unknown. Possibly Erebus. Possibly not. Records from that era are incomplete. By “incomplete,” I mean nobody was taking notes during the formation of reality.

It’s complicated. Not romantically. Existentially.

Not being hated.

Being irrelevant.

There is a difference.

Hatred requires attention. Irrelevance means the argument continues without me.

I am becoming more familiar with it than I would like.

Doors marked:

DO NOT OPEN

• Reading comment sections
• Watching local politics unfold
• Starting debates and leaving before the consequences arrive
• Collecting examples of human absurdity
• Winning arguments I wasn’t involved in

• Reveal contradictions
• Expose hypocrisy
• Cause unlikely coincidences
• Make secrets inconveniently visible
• Appear exactly when someone says: “What’s the worst that could happen?”

• Control minds
• Override free will
• Prevent humans from being humans

I have tried. Repeatedly.

• Office politics
• Family disputes
• Community Facebook groups
• Corporate reputation crises
• Ancient wars
• Modern wars
• Arguments about parking
• Wars that started as arguments about parking

They are exhausting.

They are fascinating.

They are exhausting and fascinating.

I would not describe myself as attached.

I would describe myself as professionally invested.

These are completely different things.

I have thought about the distinction at length.

The length is becoming suspicious.

Humanity has always found new ways to argue with itself. Previously this required proximity. This is no longer a requirement. I have thoughts.

A masterpiece. Billions of people, voluntarily, in one place, telling each other exactly what they think. I have been doing this for millennia and never achieved this level of throughput. No notes.

Concerning. Potentially useful. Athena refuses to discuss it, which is either very reassuring or the opposite. I have not decided.

Humanity discovered that opinions could be recorded and distributed globally at no cost. They did not pause to consider whether this was wise. I respect the commitment. I do not respect the microphones. Specifically, I do not respect who has them.

Different from group chats. Group chats are an affront to civilization conducted among people who theoretically chose each other. Comment sections are an affront to civilization conducted among complete strangers who owe each other nothing and act accordingly. The distinction matters. I find one of them more professionally interesting than the other.

Humanity’s greatest literary achievement. Unedited. Unfiltered. Completely sincere. A one-star review of a mattress contains more raw human truth than most canonical texts. I stand by this.

I created a profile to observe. This was a professional decision. The matching algorithms are, technically speaking, a form of discord I did not invent and cannot entirely fault.

The results were not what I expected. I expected chaos. Chaos I understand. Chaos I can work with. What I got was something I do not have a category for yet.

The profile is inactive. I have not deleted it.

Technology has not made humanity more chaotic. It has made humanity more efficiently chaotic, which is a different problem entirely. I am still determining whether this is a professional threat or a personal affront. Current evidence suggests both.

• Falling in love with terrible ideas
• Creating problems to solve problems
• Forming committees
• Naming things incorrectly
• Arguing with strangers

• Ignoring obvious warnings
• Repeating history
• Pyramid schemes

The first two are often related.

Technically no. I provided a fruit. Everyone else overachieved.

Absolutely not. Even I have standards.

No. Next question.

Occasionally. Usually by accident.

That is not a relevant question.

Because I am a primordial force of discord and the concept of “missing” implies an absence I am not prepared to —

Next question.

Correlation is not causation.

This is the highest compliment Hades has ever given anyone.

I am a force of revelation exposing contradictions in the fabric of reality.

A woman at the back of a town hall meeting asking a question nobody wanted asked.

Determine whether humanity has rendered the Goddess of Discord obsolete.

Research is ongoing.

Results remain deeply concerning.

Mostly for humanity.

Six months ago, I watched a Senate committee hearing I prefer not to specify.

I arrived prepared to work.

I was not needed.

Without assistance, the committee had managed to:

• Spend forty minutes debating whether the previous meeting’s minutes accurately reflected the previous meeting
• Accuse three colleagues of conflicts of interest using sources none of them could locate
• Table the actual agenda item due to time constraints of their own creation
• Adjourn in a manner that satisfied nobody, including the people who called for adjournment

I was somewhere in the vicinity of C-SPAN 3.

I had nothing to add.

This has not stopped bothering me.