On the Ridiculousness of this Modern World

A Poem

Life via algorithmic preference Do we even know what we like anymore or are we just waiting for a suggestion? Can we even function if our phone doesn’t tell us where to go or where to be at 3:30 on Thursday? Sometimes I know exactly where to go and how to get there and I still put the map on just in case which is complete bullsh*t because I know where to go and can’t understand why I am looking at roads on a screen, falling out of my air vent instead of the road ahead I’m in a driving simulation and I am the crash-test dummy

We used to take care with our photos because film was expensive and we had to wait like a week to even see the photos we thought we took We were lucky when our eyes were open half the time But now we take endless selfies Yes, we modern humans are filling our feeds with pictures of ourselves Is this real? Does anyone not realize how crazy this is? That we walk around holding our phones out and companies make sticks so we can do it better and we are so f*cking vain that we are doing this in traffic and on bridges and over cliffs Even the characters on The Sims think this is ridiculous

We create an amazing form of communication and then it just becomes another way to sell to us You can’t even access this site unless you sign up for our email list You can unsubscribe right away but it will take two weeks for that to take effect Did you really mean to unsubscribe? Yes, I really meant it. So. F*cking. Much. And then texting was a revelation and we didn’t have to hold these tiny computers to our ears anymore to dialogue with each other until the buzzards found our numbers or Facebook sold them to them and now we get texts to sell us literally anything that we never want No one will leave us alone not even on here where most people have a very interesting email list that you should sign up for but then they just link to the stories that I’ve already seen and now I don’t want to see the stories because I can find my own sh*t and I have 137 unopened emails all about sales and great offers and weekly updates with high-brow content And all I want is to delete the Internet For everyone’s sake

We want to wear a headset to experience something that we can do in real life, but can’t right now because we are busy with these eight pounds of glasses showing us an ocean even though I can drive to one We want to all, literally all of us, be freelancers and writers and bloggers but we want to do it in the quickest way possible by taking an online course on how to hack the system instead of learning how to write So we obsess about SEO and alt-text and hyperlinks and backlinks and sidelinks and every link imaginable instead of obsessing about the words And because that’s frustrating we write a story about it Stop We write stories about why we are writing stories and we fall into the meta blowhole of the universe engorged with our own self-interest enraptured with our personal diatribes which are in no way memoirs They are just Internet shouting into the ridiculous void of claps, likes, upvotes, back pats, hand slaps, and general literary malaise

We go to concerts and watch the concert through our phone because we just have to record it to upload it to YouTube and then link that to our Instagram which links to Medium and everyone who watched the concert video of Lorde will definitely want to read about How I Plan Not to Duplicate Stories Anymore and since you are on my Medium page maybe you need an e-course on how to write better copy all because you like Royals We go to a national monument and have to wait in line to take a picture of ourselves in front of it but everyone is taking so long because they have to take 20 different versions just in case versions 1–19 aren’t so perfect and won’t get more followers on Snap And we forget that we just saw a Wonder of the World but no worries, we will remember when we post that pic of ourselves, but only after nine filters are applied to make the actual world look like it’s not real because it might not be If it was real, how could it be like this? How could we be like this? Enveloped in so much ridiculousness

© Jonathan Greene 2019

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