“It feels like someone has pressed the pause button for my life,” reports Maxime. The 28-year-old Frenchman, who actually has a different name, sits in his room in front of the screen for the video call. Charismatic and articulate, he has chin-length black hair already mixed with a little gray; his gray sweater goes with it. The room is directly under the roof, it is bright and furnished with stylish wooden furniture. Nothing indicates that Maxime spends almost his entire life in this room, in front of this screen. “I leave the house once a month at most,” he says.
His day consists of little more than eating, surfing the internet and playing computer games. He gets up at 2 p.m. and goes to bed at 6 a.m. Due to the monotony, he has gradually lost his sense of time: “Every day feels like yesterday.” With interruptions, in different places and sometimes more, sometimes less pronounced, it’s been like this for ten years.