Are you actually afraid that seventeen strangers will steal your digital shopping cart? It is a question most of us avoid. We see the little box. It sits at the corner of the screen. It says eighteen people are viewing this right now. We feel a sudden heat in our chest. We move faster. We click with more force.

“

“The phone rang with a sharp, jagged persistence. I answered it in the gray light. A stranger asked for a man named Dave. I told him there was no Dave here. He didn’t believe me.”

— The 5 am Call

He said he had the number right in front of him. He was reacting to data that was simply wrong. In my work as an archaeological illustrator, I deal with layers. I sit at a drafting table for hours. I use fine pens to map the stratigraphy of a site.

Mapping the Dirt vs. Digital Paint

I see the dirt. I see the broken pottery. I see the charcoal from old fires. Each layer tells a story about what was actually there. You cannot fake a layer of ash. You cannot invent a fossilized seed. But on the screen, layers are different.

The “people viewing” counter is just a layer of digital paint. It is a flickering script meant to look like a pulse. I used to believe these numbers were honest. I once sat in a design meeting for a large retailer. I argued that live counters were essential for user engagement.

I told the room that people need to see the crowd. I believed the numbers were pulled from real-time server logs. I was wrong. I was deeply, embarrassingly wrong about how that clock works. Most of these counters are just random number generators. They are set to stay between twelve and thirty.

They are not reflecting reality. They are creating a feeling. They are an artificial pressure. The digital storefront often uses three specific types of pressure: The Pulse, The Scarcity, and The Social Mirror.

When I illustrate an ancient vase, I must be precise. If I add a line that isn’t there, I ruin the record. If I lie about the curve of a handle, the history changes. This is why the modern internet feels so heavy. It is full of lines that were never there. It is full of ghosts.

The counter is a mirror that shows someone else’s face. The pressure is designed to stop you from thinking. It wants you to stop comparing. It wants you to stop checking for quality. When the “eighteen people” are watching, you don’t ask about the source.

You don’t ask if the item is authentic. You just want to own it before the ghosts do. This is a dangerous way to live. It is an even worse way to shop. It turns every purchase into a small, panicked war. I think back to the man on the phone.

He was so sure Dave existed. He had a number on a piece of paper. He had “data.” But the data did not match the person on the other end. He was talking to a tired illustrator in a room full of ink. He was chasing a ghost because a piece of paper told him to.

The Authenticity of the Floor

We do the same thing every time we see a “live” counter. We trust the paper instead of the silence. An honest store does not need to use ghosts. It does not need to invent a crowd to prove value. If the product is good, it stands on its own.

It is like a well-preserved artifact. It has weight. It has a clear origin. When you are looking for Lost Mary disposable vapes, you are looking for a specific thing. You are looking for a flavor you know.

You are looking for a device that works. You do not need a ticker telling you that Dave from Ohio is buying it too. You just need to know the box contains what it says it does. Authenticity is the removal of unnecessary layers.

In my drawings, I sometimes have to remove the dust to see the bone. I have to ignore the loose soil to find the floor. Digital shopping should be the same. We should look for the floor. We should look for the stores that offer clear information.

My hand is steady when I work with ink. I cannot afford to shake. I cannot afford to be nervous. But the internet is built to make us shake. It is built to make our thumbs hover. It is built to make us feel like we are missing out.

There is No Dave

We are told the world is ending in a “limited time offer.” We are told the crowd is moving. We are told we are late to the party. The truth is usually much quieter. The truth is usually a quiet room at 5 am.

It is the sound of a pen on vellum. It is the realization that the man on the phone was just wrong. There is no Dave. There are no eighteen people watching your screen. There is just you and a piece of glass.

When we accept the fake counter, we lose our standards. We start to believe that pressure is a sign of quality. We mistake anxiety for desire. This is a profound error in human judgment. We should demand a higher level of respect from the tools we use.

The next time you see that little box, wait. Take a breath. Count to ten. Notice how the number doesn’t actually change the product. Notice how the “seventeen people” don’t have faces. They don’t have names. They are just bits of light.

I went back to sleep after the phone call. I dreamt of empty cities. When I woke up, I felt a strange sense of clarity. The world is full of wrong numbers and fake tickers. Our job is to find the things that are authentic.

We need to stop chasing Dave. He isn’t here. He was never here. The counter creates a ghost that buys the things you only want. I will return to my drafting table now. I have a new layer to map. It is a piece of wood from a sunken ship.

The digital world can be a beautiful place. It can be a library of human knowledge. But right now, it is a hall of mirrors. We are bumping into ourselves and thinking we have found a friend. We are fighting ghosts for the last item on the shelf.

It is time to turn on the lights. It is time to see the room for what it is. It is time to shop with our eyes open. We are the ones holding the pen. We are the ones who decide which layers matter. I will not answer the phone if it rings again.

I know who is on my side of the line. I know what is real. I hope you find that same certainty. I hope you find the things that are genuine. Because in the end, the only person viewing this is you. And that should be enough.