GROUP CHAT Episode Three

What's everyone's worst opinion?

Previously on GROUP CHAT: The poll function as passive-aggressive coup, Honor Levy starts a war, and Ross teases a mysterious side quest in Japan.

This week: Is a group chat a thermodynamic system?

In the posthumously published notes to his 1824 treatise Reflections on the Motive Power of Fire, French physicist Sadi Carnot observes, “Wherever there is destruction of heat, there is production of motive power.” This notion has since been refined into what we now call the first law of thermodynamics. Heat can move in any direction, in or out of any one position in space, but it never disappears completely.

Is a group chat a thermodynamic system? For the physicists of digital space who take up this question in the future, this week’s episode of GROUP CHAT will serve as a foundational case study.

The experiment begins in the first minutes of week three, when most of the cast is either asleep or otherwise occupied in the real world, but one member is awake and looking for answers:

What is James asking, exactly? What does he mean by “cake slicer person”? And is there really one “in the room”? The next morning, all is revealed. Alexandra Naughton has officially joined the cast of GROUP CHAT, and she’s brought along a tiramisu from Philadelphia’s own Termini Brothers bakery, as well as a few riffs on a classic Patricia Lockwood tweet:

Before long, however, the pleasantries are over, and the tough questions are back on the table:

Meanwhile, on the other side of the world, Ross has officially landed in Japan, and the mystery surrounding the offer that brought him there has only deepened:

Of course, the other members of the chat don’t have to fly to Japan to find that questions tend to beget further questions, whether or not they come with satisfying answers:

So far, Ross is managing to keep his head in a strange environment that continually fails or refuses to answer his questions:

Others, however, can only hold back for so long before they start demanding answers. When a casual prompt about recent works of transgressive literature leads to some unfiltered critique of the “trauma plot,” static builds to a critical point:

Mere days after the arrival of a new member elevates the temperature of the chat to an all-time high, one of its most dynamic participants makes an exit that leaves the rest of the cast depleted of energy. Will these fluctuations resolve and restore the chat to a state of equilibrium? Will Ross ever meet “the other American”? Will the cast share even worse opinions as the season progresses? Join us again next week to find out.

GROUP CHAT is a production of Grey Fiction Media. All episodes are written, directed, edited, and produced by Stephen Piccarella. All original music by Sebastian Castillo.