A report from the Nakatomi Plaza of your soul

“Welcome to the party, pal.”

It’s something that John McClane says in “Die Hard,” after he throws the body of a terrorist, many stories from the embattled Nakatomi Plaza, onto the patrol vehicle of Sgt. Al Powell, a witless LAPD detective that is now, “in the know.”

Up until this moment, and ultimately after the terrorism, the story is about re connection and family. An off-duty NYC cop meets his wife and kids in California for the holidays, but is waylaid at a party that turns into a hostile takeover, McClane springs into action, the LA cops are called, Sgt. Powell responds, he’s sent off by the terrorists, and then the invitation to the party falls onto (and destroys) his squad car.

“Welcome to the party, pal.”

I think about this quote a lot, and then this morning, I started wondering why…

I think we’re all looking for our, ‘welcome to the party, pal’ moment.

We’re all McClane, facing our own internal Nakaotomi Plazas; figurative hostile takeovers happening within, what is supposed to be, a peaceful space of reconnection. We’re crawling around our own unique airshafts. We’re fighting our own authorities. We all have our own Hans Grubers to face.

And this is offline.

One of the side-effects of the algorithmically curated, cubist reality we call life online, is a lot of the hostility and terrorism is curated on screens in social feeds and news headlines, framed to stop scrolls and hearts, content only we see, so we’re alarmed, and when we feel like we’re being ignored, we want to throw something out the window and ask someone/anyone/everyone to join us in the fight.

But here’s where it twists in the online, hyper personalized and fractured world; it’s now, “welcome to MY party pal.”

DieHard McClane needed people to know about a general problem everyone was facing.

Digital McClane is asking for anyone to know about the specific problems they are facing.

One is reacting to life as it happens, the other might be reacting to algorithms aimed to amplify anxiety and existential angst.

So before we launch another assailant out of a digital window, the real question to ask when we feel like we’re in a DieHard situation might be, “welcome to whose party, pal?”

Also – take back the Nakatomi Plaza of your soul. Yipee-kay-yay, MFers.