FORT WAYNE, IN—Upon realizing his most meaningful social interactions now took place among people he had never actually encountered in the flesh, local man Andrew Riley confided to reporters Wednesday that he was horrified to find himself seeking community online.Riley, a 33-year-old account manager who last summer joined an internet forum for wristwatch enthusiasts, expressed terror and disgust as he spoke of how he had apparently reached a point where he derived a greater sense of belonging from a message board than he did from anything else in his life. The time he spent on the forum had become, he acknowledged, the best part of his day.“Jesus Christ, these are the people I now feel most connected to—random people I’ve never met in real life and probably never will,” said a visibly distressed Riley, who rubbed his temples as he described how his only meaningful bonds with other human beings currently stemmed from his exchanges with a group of self-proclaimed “watch nerds” on the internet. “I don’t even understand how it happened. Six months ago, I went online to ask a quick question about a problem I was having with my Timex. Fast-forward to the present, and I’m one of the top commenters on the r/watches subreddit.”“Do you know how often you have to comment for that to happen?” he added. “Way too much.”According to Riley, an event this week brought home just how dependent he had become on the internet watch community for even the most basic forms of social camaraderie. After receiving a long-sought promotion at work, he suddenly realized that the people he most looked forward to sharing the good news with weren’t people he had actual face-to-face relationships with—they were timepiece connoisseurs fond of uploading wrist shots to Instagram.Riley said he was alarmed and appalled by this new awareness of how little genuine human contact he had in his life. He now felt revulsion toward his web browser’s 20 open tabs featuring watch-related sites. He was disturbed when he recalled how he had recently skipped drinks with his coworkers because he wanted to finish a 600-word post about the best vintage Seiko watches from the 1990s. And he was deeply unnerved when he thought about the time he arrived 30 minutes late to an intramural softball game because he was participating in a lengthy thread about which mechanisms were ideal for producing a smooth sweep of the second hand.“It’s gotten to the point where members of the watch forum are the only people I really talk to—not just about watches, but about anything—and that can’t be good,” said Riley, wincing as he admitted that the person he felt closest to in life was a frequent poster with the username JackSkellington1985, someone whose real name he had never learned. “These people, most of whom I only know by their cartoon avatars and wouldn’t recognize if I passed on the street, are the nearest thing I have to friends in this world, which is really fucked up.”“The fact that I’m quietly hoping to meet a long-term partner on here is almost more than I can bear,” he continued.Riley’s face then lit up upon receiving a notification on his phone, and he reportedly spent the next three hours exchanging takes with his fellow watch forum users about whether Omega was releasing too many limited editions these days.The post Man Horrified To Find Self Seeking Community Online appeared first on The Onion.