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Like for many of you, my life has become detached from the physical world. I’m having drinks with buddies on Zoom, chatting with my boss on Google Hangouts and texting up a storm with my dad and sister.

Maybe you are crushing this life lived through screens. I am not.

I need to see real people! I need to talk out loud — to people, not to my slowly dying houseplants.

I needed professional help for this. Professional video gamer help.

I called — on Zoom, of course — Thomas Biery, a 24-year-old who works in marketing and has a second life streaming video games to his followers.

While this extremely online life is new to me, Thomas has been living it for years. He assured me that we can sustain meaningful connections over broadband — and, forced into the virtual world, we might even become a more honest version of ourselves.