Disclaimer: This article is based on actual news from the real world – honestly! However, it has been sprinkled with a healthy dose of satire.
A biotech company installed a telephone last weekend outside a coffee shop at 736 Commonwealth Avenue in Brookline, bearing the words “Call a Boomer” that connects to a matching unit in the lobby of Sierra Manor, a Reno, Nevada-based affordable housing complex for seniors. When someone picks up the Boston-based handset, the other rings 2,500 miles away, where a retiree who just figured out how to unmute herself on Zoom can choose whether or not to answer an unsolicited call from a teenager who just discovered voting matters. The conversations are being recorded. Matter Neuroscience, the company behind the project, plans to use clips on social media.
"No, this isn't Zoom, you're not supposed to see me… Hello?" (matterneuroscience/instagram)
Matter’s social strategist, Calla Kessler, explained that younger and older adults experience the highest rates of loneliness of any demographic, which is the kind of observation that sounds profound until you remember that one group can’t afford rent and the other group’s kids stopped calling years ago. The project, Kessler said, aims to “inspire generational connection through meaningful conversations, despite differences in age, lifestyle, or politics.” A plaque on the phone says as much, for anyone who reads plaques, which is no one.
The Boston installation is a follow-up to an earlier version that connected San Francisco to Abilene, Texas, which Matter selected specifically because one city is predominantly liberal and the other is very conservative, which sounds like a genuinely terrible idea. The goal was to bridge the political divide, which the company accomplished by generating 350 conversations and 400 voicemails. Kessler described the pilot as “a hit,” however, the fact that they did not install a similar follow-up installation later speaks volumes.
For the Boston-Reno connection, Matter wanted to shift from political to generational divide, as if that’s somehow different. Boston was chosen because it is “full of students and young people who are civically engaged,” which is a polite way of saying it is full of people who will interact with almost anything that looks like it might be an art installation. Reno was chosen because a Matter employee had a connection with Volunteers of America, which runs Sierra Manor.
The phone line is now operational, and Matter has secured a one-month agreement with Pavement Coffeehouse to host the device. The company will evaluate its popularity before deciding whether to extend, which presumably involves counting how many college sophomores call to ask a boomer why their generation broke the planet, and how many boomers pick up to deliver an unrequested seven-minute monologue about how the real problem is nobody wants to work anymore.
Gratefully waiting for a Zoomer to get out of bed and down to the coffee shop. (matterneuroscience/instagram)
Matter Neuroscience was founded in 2019. Its core product is an app designed to teach users about the neuroscience of happiness and how to apply it to their daily lives. Kessler described the company’s framework as helping people “understand that happiness is a practice and once you understand how it’s created on a molecular level, you can start tailoring your life to opening yourself up to these positive experiences that ultimately lead to a happy life.” Which is a real sentence from a real person at a real company, said with a straight face.
The phones are free to use. If nobody answers, callers can leave a voicemail, which will sit in a server somewhere alongside 400 others until a social media intern decides which fragments of human loneliness play best in a 30-second TikTok reel once all the unintentional racism is edited out.
This story is based on fully factual news, but if we got it wrong, blame these guys, we’re just here to make it funny.
