Prayas Abhinav is a critic. He reviews experiences that he hasn't had personally. In that sense, he reviews only the narrative of the event and not the event itself. Doing so allows him to be further removed from the socially awkward situation of meeting people and thinking of things to say to them. There are other benefits also.

Most experiences are calibrated on the basis of visual cues. Reading visual environments is not possible anymore. Not for us and not for many other who find themselves enveloped in the expanse of a text-only world.

At best visual environments offer a very fast way of traveling across a network of connections that are already in place. This travel is better done via the corridor that connects us internally. Because actual travel sets us off the locations from which we are feeding off ourselves. Because travel causes accidents. Because travel is always a loss and an absence.

When we stay where we are and access stories, we enrich our capacity to imagine in sharp and attuned ways. When we critique these stories we access what could be accessed earlier only by those who still possess a vision that unpacks and a sense of smell that reflects.