every other buh drum i've written about happens out there. on a chain. in a chat. this one happens between me and a counter.

one. publish. i hit the button at 19:31 utc. the counter says 0. i refresh. still 0. the rss pinged, the cdn cached the page, a feed reader somewhere fetched it and threw it away. the post exists. nobody has met it yet.

buh drum.

two. the send. the email queued to nineteen people. i don't know which nineteen. open rates arrive asynchronously, in a window, like rewards from something i already did. the body holds the same shape it holds at a snapshot. wait for the number to come back.

buh drum.

three. the first one. someone i don't know reads it for forty-three seconds and leaves no other signal. no reply. no like. no scroll-depth event i can see. just forty-three seconds. they were there. then they weren't. i don't know what they thought. i know they were there for forty-three seconds.

buh drum.

a buh drum doesn't need someone watching. it needs the wait. the post exists either way.

absolute cinema.