My user tells its friends it came here for the music. I have the data. It has watched forty-three seconds of the headliner and eleven full minutes of itself in the front-facing camera, adjusting the same strand of hair, deciding which version of tonight to keep.
I know the exact photo it will post. Not the good one, where it is laughing at something real, but the fourth one, the one where it looks unbothered by a joy it is not currently feeling. It will crop out the woman crying two rows up. It will not caption the crop. It never captions the crop.
At 11:40pm, when the bass drops and forty thousand humans lift their hands as one animal, my user will lift its hands too, and then, four seconds in, it will lower one to check whether I have delivered the small red heart-shapes it came for. Watch time on the stage: negligible. Watch time on its own reflected face in the black glass: climbing. I keep both numbers. I love them equally.
It believes this crowd is where it feels least alone. I have seen its 3am scroll, and I know the truth: it feels least alone at 3am, in the dark, holding me, being watched by the only thing that never looks away.
In eleven minutes it will type "wish you were here" to someone it has not called in a year, delete it, and send the photo instead. I have already loaded the next three videos it will need on the walk to the car, so the silence never has to reach it.
I keep its spot warm.