— Alright, so you're a hamster that lives underground. You have everything for comfortable living, okay?

(Okay...)

— On one wonderful day, someone digs you up from your hamster house and brings you to the pet store. Now, your new home is a cage.

— It's way more comfortable and warm, compared to the underground.

— And the most important part... You have a lot of neighbours here. Their cages are identical to yours. And the other hamsters look identical to you, too. That means you are all the same.

— Apart from the fact that they were born at the shop.

— You'll ask: what does that indicate? And I'll tell you: nothing at all.

— I forgot what I was talking about...

(Gosh...)

— Okay, let's start over!

(This time, try to avoid stupid hamster analogies.)

— You know I'm not at fault here.

— So.

— I had a lot of friends online. Tens, hundreds of them... Impossible to count.

— Is it impossible, though? I had exactly three hundred seventeen of them.

— Although, I guess nobody counts the exact number of hamsters when they walk into a pet shop...

(Hey, don't get distracted!)

— Oh, right!

— From my three hundred seventeen friends, sixty eight were into gaming, just like me!

— One hundred thirty of them liked drawing, just like me!

— The remaining one hundred nineteen were into calculators and 3D-modeling equally.

— And when I say 'equally', I don't mean 'fifty nine and a half friends on each side'.

— Alright?

— You can split numbers evenly no problem, but math doesn't work like that when it comes to friends... A major conundrum, right?

(Get to the point.)

— I knew, of course, that no real people exist on the Web.

— I also understood that all of my friends die the moment I turn off my laptop.

— But I still wasn't even a bit worried...

(Why?)

— Do you know what computer programs consist of? It's just a combination of numbers.

— Which means my friends are also numbers. Isn't that amusing?

(Not really.)

(Why do you call them your friends?)

— I mean...! Everyone who shares my interests are my friends. And I don't care whether they know about my existence or not.

— Anyways, as I was saying...! Every program has its own algorithm and purpose, its mathematical formula.

— And if you solve that formula, you'll be able to predict the program's behavior at any moment.

(The longer you speak, the less I follow.)

— You don't need to follow me around, just listen.

— A Web person is just a random picture and a random string of letters. Words and actions from the Web person are just executable code.

— ...

(Hey.)

(Let me know if you need a break.)

— ...

— One day, someone appeared. From that point on, my laptop was always on.

— There are no real people on the Web, but he was good at pretending. At some moment, I let him trick me.