Noelle.dev

Immersive Mode

An update to your social media site enables a whole new experience.

DINGDINGDINGDING-DING-D-DING

You wake up to the sound of your phone buzzing nonstop with notifications. Still blurry-eyed, you prop yourself up in bed and unlock your phone to figure out what all the fuss is about.

As you open your instance homepage, you're greeted with a familiar "what's new" pop-up that you see about once a month, detailing the updates that have been made since your last visit. Typically that list contains banal items such as "improved localization strings" or "UI bug fixes". But this time, all that's on the list is:

"Added Immersive Mode"

There doesn't appear to be any additional details about what "Immersive Mode" actually means, so you tap OK and are greeted with your usual timeline…

…Except nearly every post is greyed-out with the message "Enable Immersive Mode to view this post". Looking around, you notice a new Immersive Mode toggle switch at the top of the feed. Upon tapping it, it disappears and the message "Immersive Mode activated" pops up briefly before fading away.

You start rapidly scrolling through the now-visible posts, seeing exclamations of "HOLY SHIT" and "I CANT BELIEVE THIS IS HAPPENING" and "ASJDGASAFSASFHKLHDF". You see many group selfies of people you assumed lived on opposite corners of the globe, but now they're together?

As page by page passes by, you notice that your phone screen has started taking up a larger and larger portion of your field of view. Your relaxed position on your bed is getting harder and harder to maintain as you start slipping forward, as if your bed has turned into a water slide.

The phone seems to be scrolling itself now, getting bigger and bigger until it's all you can see as you slide down, closer and closer as your room and your bed feels distant. Then your stomach drops into free-fall, you tumble, impossibly, into your phone, which has somehow become a window into a tangible digital world!

When you come to rest a few seconds later, you open your eyes to a bunch of familiar, anthropomorphic animal faces staring down at you. They prop you up and you get a chance to take in your surroundings. It looks like a town square, with lots of greenery and benches, surrounded by tall buildings.

You reach up to rub your eyes with your hands—wait, are those your hands? "Soft, pudgy paws" would be a better descriptor now! You look down at your torso, covered in soft colorful fur, and tears of joy spring unbidden from your eyes as you smile from pointy ear to pointy ear.

You and all your closest friends can finally be together!

In the way you've always wanted.