Pinpricks of static crawl up my left arm, a dull ache where I slept on it wrong for who knows how long. It’s the same feeling, that same pins-and-needles helplessness, that I get from staring at the spinning circle in the middle of my television. The screen is frozen on a close-up of a volcano, but the promised 4K majesty is a blurry, pixelated mess that looks like it was filmed with a potato in 2006. My internet speed test, run just 6 minutes ago, clocked in at a glorious 236 Mbps. Two hundred and thirty-six. A number that promises seamless, instantaneous everything. Yet here I am, trapped in a 486p hell, my arm buzzing with dead nerves and my brain buzzing with a rage that is completely, utterly useless.

We’ve been trained, conditioned really, to blame ourselves. The first reaction is always personal failure. It’s my Wi-Fi. My router is too old. I must have too many devices connected. I should move the router 6 inches to the left. For years, I believed it. I fell for it completely. I admit, with no small amount of shame, that I once spent $676 on a futuristic-looking mesh Wi-Fi system that promised to blanket my apartment in pure, unadulterated signal. I