Digital Addiction. A Poem
Everything is possible, but I can’t seem to do shit,
Before I start a train of thought, someone’s hijacked it.
I start to write a poem, but what’s this other tab?
Sexual assault in Tibet, there’s a rage I never had.
Will I make it past a stanza? LOL, good luck with that,
Donald Trump is up to something, and the Internet is mad.
If it calms down for a second, can I then start to begin?
Check my email for a second, OMG I’ve been sucked in.
But wait, I’ve snuck a lie in here, I keep saying someone else,
As if they come and use my phone, and I’m crying out for help.
Even you — if you’ve got this far — you’re kinda wasting time.
You could be with your family, you could be fighting crime.
We are all caught up in this, this literal Inter-Net.
We don’t remember boredom, but we’re full up with regret.
There’s always something better, there’s always something new.
And since you rarely pay for it, the Net is selling you.
There are geeks and statisticians, VCs and engineers,
Poking round your brains all day, feeling out the gears.
They take each slice of inattention, bag it up at scale.
Put it on the street in bulk, mass distraction up for sale.
The powers in the world today aren’t selling oil or land,
Today they’re mining human minds, thru windows in our hand.
The pick-axe hits quite lightly, draws data out real quick,
Before the page is loaded, but you may feel a little sick.
So that one thing that you notice, that nagging little itch?
It’s making the world better (re: making some people rich)
So forget digital irritation, that fingers cannot scratch,
It’s just a minor side effect, you know we’ll all be back.
