Socrates The YouTuber
- 2 days ago
- 5 min read
By Yan Xi
Ancient Greece.
Socrates holds up the cup of hemlock and calmly drinks it without any hesitation:
“Crito, I owe the sacrifice of a rooster to Asklepios; will you pay that debt and not neglect to do so?”
Socrates says his last wise words, and dies. The cup drops on the ground, and as the sound of dramatic crying gets louder, Socrates’s soul flows upward majestically to the sky.
The clouds.
The wind.
The stars.
The rain.
And suddenly,
KA -- BOOM!
A random college student in sweatpants and a baseball cap gets struck by a flash of lightning while holding a cup of Dunkin’.
“DUDE! Are you okay???”
Socrates slowly opens his eyes and sees dazzling white lights.
“Ah,” he murmurs, “I must be right. The soul is immortal and there is a divine place after death.”
“What are you talking about?” A face appears above him, “Bro, you just got struck by lightning. Are you okay?”
The young man looks like a college student held together entirely by caffeine and academic stress.
Socrates stares at him for a couple of seconds.
“Are you the god of this place?”
“What? No! I’m Jonathan.”
“You are not a god?”
“Dude, I’m literally your roommate!”
The next few weeks are confusing and chaotic.
Socrates spends an hour arguing with Siri because he believes that it doesn’t take the time to think before answering questions. He reads through the entire “Terms & Conditions” of Instagram and refuses to agree. And he starts a whole serious debate with his Uber driver after asking him if he truly loves his job.
His roommate Jonathan assumes the lightning strike must have caused some psychological damage.
“Why do you keep talking like some ancient philosophers? And would you PLEASE put on some shoes before you go out?”
“Because I’m Socrates.”
“Right,” Jonathan snaps his fingers, “and I am Iron Man.”
Despite everything, Socrates somehow adapts quickly.
He grows used to riding inside metal boxes that lift people up and down in buildings taller than anything in Athens. He learns that tiny glowing rectangles somehow contain more information than entire libraries. And although he never fully understands cars, he admits they are much faster than horses.
Then one night, Johnathon invites him to watch YouTube together.
At first, he finds the platform really interesting. There are tiny dogs that run in tiny shoes, people who paint hilarious cartoon faces of themselves, and influencers filming skydiving challenges.
But then the algorithm leads them somewhere else.
A viral short video shows up. Someone recorded a scene on the subway where a young man refuses to offer his seat to an elderly lady.
Jonathan clicks on the comments section:
“What a selfish person.”
“This generation has no empathy!”
“He had the seat first.”
“And that’s why humanity is doomed.”
Socrates turns to Jonathan:
“Strange.”
“What?” Jonathan asks.
“None of them are certain about what happened, but everyone seems so confident when they comment.”
“Yeah, that’s kinda how the internet works,” Johnathon shrugs.
Socrates stares at him in horror.
The second morning.
Sunlight begins to shine through the curtain.
Jonathan slaps off his alarm and wakes up unwillingly. He turns his head and finds Socrates sitting in front of his laptop and typing.
“Dude, what are you doing?”
Jonathan stretches his neck and sees Socrates battling a war under the comment section of yesterday’s subway video.
“Should we define a man’s selfishness by his belief or his action?”
“What do you mean when you use the word empathy? Can you define it?”
“Which one is a better society? The one that prioritizes freewill. Or the one that prioritizes virtue?”
“Why do you say humanity is doomed? You didn’t give any deliberate explanation.”
“OH! For god’s sake! Did you stay up all night arguing with strangers on the internet?”
“People don’t seem to understand anything about what they are talking about. I need to help them.”
“Bruh. The fact is, none of them want your difficult questions, they only want to confirm their own ideas. And let me tell you, there’s no way that your comments are gonna get attention, because the algorithms only show… Wait! What the…”
Jonathan takes over the laptop.
“You got how many replies?”
“I think…”
“No way! The number of likes you got is literally more than all my videos combined!”
Jonathan is totally awake now, and he keeps scrolling down the comment section.
“Look at this one!
‘Bro talks like he’s Socrates.’
Jeez, you really do sound like that guy.”
After a little bit of “Social Media 101," Jonathan convinces Socrates to film YouTube videos for his channel.
“Come on, look at this place! We are never getting any views with this terrible dorm lighting and the cracking sound of laundry machines next door.”
Jonathan is moving the tripod back and forth to find the perfect lighting while Socrates sits completely serious on a chair.
“Okay, we gotta start with a hook.”
“What is a hook?”
“It’s something that catches the audience within the first few seconds, because you know, attention spans today are crazy.”
“Why? Do we really understand attention spans?”
Jonathan puts his hand over the forehead, “What am I thinking…”
They are filming a video of Socrates talking about the subway short video and responding to its comment section because that’s where Socrates went viral. Johnathon calls this riding the trend.
The video quickly spreads across the internet within a week after Jonathan uploads it.
Reaction videos appear overnight. People actually start calling him Socrates because of his language style. Someone edits fiery music to the background of a short clip from the video with glowing red eyes effects on his face.
The comment section explodes.
“Finally, someone who’s actually intelligent online.”
“This guy must be unemployed and have no friends.”
“So, asking stupid questions online is called philosophy now?”
One YouTuber uploads a video titled:
“Top 10 Times Modern Socrates DESTROYED People with Logic”
Socrates observes everything in silence.
“Why,” he finally asks, “do all the popular phrases suggest hate and violence?”
Meanwhile, memes of him spread rapidly.
One image shows Socrates’ famous pose, right hand pointing to the sky, but with the face of the “Modern Socrates” and cool sunglasses. The caption:
DEBATE ME, BRO.
Jonathan laughs so hard at this one and forwards it during every online conversation.
But not all the attention is positive.
Some people accuse Socrates of being arrogant. Other hate comments describe him as annoying and manipulative. A couple of Reedit posts appear, arguing over whether philosophy itself is useful.
One late evening, Jonathan closes his laptop with a sigh. He notices Socrates staring silently into space more often recently and he feels a little guilty.
“I’m sorry, man.” He says, “It’s not you, it’s just… you know, memes and edits are funnier, hateful words are louder, and truth…it cannot make you laugh nor make you look cool.”
Socrates smiles.
His memory brings him back to Athens. He remembers that Aristophanes used to create plays that mocked him in front of the crowds.
He also wonders, if his student Plato were born in today’s world, would he still be publishing books, or would he become a social media influencer?
Would he stress about the number of views he gets?
Outside of the dorm window, students are crossing while staring at glowing screens.
Socrates watches them quietly.
“The tools have changed,” he murmurs, “but not the people.”
Then he turns back from the window,
“…What does 'NPC' mean again?”
Yan Xi is a sophomore at CT State Naugatuck Valley.
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