The Message Is the Mask

The Message in the Mask (Audio Deep Dive English; Audio Deep Dive Bangla)

Covid did many terrible things, but perhaps its greatest magic trick was convincing us that distance could feel like closeness. We told ourselves it was noble—this “human contact reduction.” Stay home, save lives, text furiously. The digital message became the new handshake, the video call the new hug. For a while, we even believed it. We said things like, “See? Connection doesn’t have to be physical,” while sitting in our pajamas, lit by the unholy glow of a laptop camera, nodding into the void of a Zoom rectangle. Then the world reopened. People went back to coffee shops, airports, classrooms, and whatever passed for normal. The masks came off, but the habits stayed. Somewhere between “Can you hear me?” and “You’re on mute,” we learned that the digital proxy actually worked—sort of. Messaging systems exploded, and suddenly a thumbs-up emoji or a five-word text—“thinking of you, stay safe”—became the social equivalent of a warm embrace. We started believing our own propaganda. And then, predictably, someone figured out that this could be weaponized. Because let’s face it: digital connection is the perfect camouflage for emotional retreat. It lets you keep the performance of presence without the inconvenience of actual contact. When someone is no longer worth the trouble of proximity, you don’t have to explicitly tell that anymore—you just send a few intermittent texts, maybe a “Happy New Year” message every January, and call it maintenance. In a Zoom class today, we had a lively discussion about this modern art form. The students argued, with alarming precision, that people now substitute digital contact when the real intent is to remove someone from their orbit—slowly, politely, and with full plausible deniability. It’s not ghosting; it’s curated absence. The logic is simple: “I’m still messaging you, so clearly I care.” Translation: “I’m phasing you out, but I’d rather not show it.” In this theater of connection, the message becomes a stand-in for the body. The short text, the emoji, the occasional call—these are the props. The audience (that would be us) willingly believes the act, because it’s easier to cling to a line of text than to confront silence. The message becomes the proof of value, the declaration of presence. Except it isn’t. Presence has texture, time, cost and most importantly - commitment. Messages have none. Presence has risk. Messages have a delete button. But we’ve trained ourselves to pretend that a stream of short texts equals proximity. And when we start to believe that we can rewrite any relationship into whatever narrative we want. Covid, ever the efficient teacher, taught us how to distance people politely—and make it look like caring. We mastered the art of “being there” without being there. And now, with that new skill, we redeploy it strategically: to deny closeness, to recast companionship, and to quietly rewrite the rules of friendship. So yes, we learned something from the pandemic. We learned that “staying in touch” is often the soft launch of letting go. That messages are a wonderful way to maintain relationships you don’t actually want to maintain. And that digital connection, in the right hands, can be the most elegant tool for pushing someone away—one polite, well-timed text at a time. Covid taught us social distancing, and we never stopped congratulating ourselves for how well we can use it. And eventually we can all go back to the 1965 anthem by the Beatles, “You won’t see me.”