FEEL IMPORTANT
THE SOCIETY OF IMPORTANT PEOPLE MEETS MONTHLY
I checked the date and they were meeting the next day a few miles from me. I was free that evening, as unimportant people often are, and I made my way down the broken streets to the venue.
When I walked into the brightly lit room, there were about nine or ten people sitting in a circle. One of them rose to meet me. He told me his name was Clive and he was the leader of the group. Before this he had not been an important person.
"Congratulations on becoming to become important."
The evening unfolded and soon it became clear that, while some group members felt more important than others, everyone had gained a functioning level of self-worth from the group. I ended up volunteering to look after the keys to the room we met in. As I walked back home, I clutched the cold metal in my pocket. I was now an important person, to at least ten people.
The next day, I woke early and soon set to work on how my fellow members of the society could feel more important. The internet was just beginning back then and I came up with a scheme where each member of the group could have their own web page onto which pictures could be easily added. The group members liked the idea and I soon worked out a way to send messages between pages. It was the year 2000 and I had invented Facebook. I was now a very important person although I did not realise it yet.
The group continued to meet above Frequent Fryers Fried Chicken in Bow and, through use of the website, our residual sense of our own importance began to grow. Soon we were swapping photographs and exchanging messages like it was 2009. Once again, it was only the year 2000 and Mark Zuckerberg was probably playing Pokemon somewhere near New York.
Clive had starting wearing cravats and driving a red car. Another group member had got a promotion at work and was considering standing as a school governor. Everyone was generally feeling very important.
It was time for the next step. Our new found sense of importance had to be expressed and we had to let the world know we really mattered now. I came up with the idea or maybe Clive. We were to hire the Conway Hall and give a public lecture. It would be written by the group but delivered by only one of us. After a show of hands, I was chosen. The lecture was to be given the next month. I started to feel really important.
As the day of the lecture approached, the excitement in the group could be felt. We left confidence boosting messages on each other's web pages and I am sure we also used to send each other amusing pictures of cats as well. The title of the lecture was to be, ominously, "The Importance of Being ..."
The day arrived. Clive drove up outside the Conway Hall in his red car. I showed up clutching a paper folder of notes. The lecture went well although the audience contained only the group itself and a couple of strangers. At the end of the evening Clive made a big announcement. He said that the group was now going to dissolve as it had achieved its goal. I was shocked but accepted it.
I was back on my own again, but this time with a slowly diminishing sense of importance. I took to pacing around my home and then the streets around it. One evening, about three months after the lecture, I walked past the original place for our meetings. I could see a faint glow from the top of the building. I let myself in, walked up the stairs and opened the door. To my horror, there was the Society of Important People meeting as normal. By now everyone's sense of self-worth was so high that some were wearing expensive suits and had grown beards.
I demanded an explanation. Clive had sold the Facebook idea to, well, probably Facebook and one of the conditions had been that I would leave the group and be written out of its records.
I was outraged but secretly thrilled. I was now a more important person than I could ever have hoped to have been and I gratefully closed the door, went down the steps and made my way home.
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