The Night the Internet Got Drunk

The self-described elite of the German internet assembled in a Berlin rooftop bar, which is exactly as embarrassing as it sounds. I was among them. Bloggers, Twitter personalities, people who describe themselves as being in social media—the whole crew, gathered ostensibly to discuss the big questions: privacy, spam, the future of digital life. We solved none of these problems.

What we actually did was drink our way through the entire menu, talk loudly about follower counts until the people around us started staring, and spend a suspicious amount of time in the bathroom excavating the darkest corners of Malte’s relationship history. It turned out half the room either grew up near where I did or currently lives a few blocks away. In Wedding. In the ghetto. Like Paulchen, who was there, and who I will not describe further.

Things got genuinely unhinged when, drunk and emboldened, we nearly stormed a Warhammer shop, then let ourselves be photographed in patent leather boots outside it—I still want that photo, whoever has it. The night ended at a kebab place on Frankfurter Allee where we made enough noise to merit actual concern from the staff.

The real story of the evening, though—the one I am obligated to report—is Sara and Jeriko. They’d never met before, and within two hours they were laughing at everything the other said and consistently disappearing around corners together. I have witnesses. Drunk ones, but they count. To love, then. And to whatever comes next.