Zuckerberg grabbed our minds and programmed us.
Plagued us,
exploited our data,
social media raped us.
Weaponised our data,
Jobbs forced screens into our hands,
fed us fake ideals through our glands.
And I know you understand,
because likes and follows,
are the most valuable currency in this land.
Data worth more than oil,
follows worth more than friends.
This self-obsessed, self-loathing,
jealous, zealous, envious,
generation is sick.
Sick and tired and brain washed,
and the only pills we know are those prescribed on
news feeds and activity streams.
Take a hit from the likes flooding in,
a pick me up,
as they validate your existence and mark you as worthy,
worth it,
and worth this.
Inhale that,
certify yourself and beg for that blue tick to authenticate that.
Absorb the high and feel happy about your life,
see it trending and in lights.
Absorb the high until you recognise that placebo effect.
You see it was all a façade
and those followers aren’t friends.
Those pixelized photos were all lies,
clutching filters and touch ups and photoshop.
Pixelized lives, living lies, hiding behind fictitious disguise.
It was all a sick game,
and now you see the placebo effect.
But you are trapped in the cycle,
and you’re sicker than before.
Sicker than those twisted minds,
at Cambridge Analytica,
who probed us,
mislead us,
dehumanised us.
Your life becomes ruled by notifications,
dominated by that phone vibration,
which you need for a quick buzz.
Posting becomes habitual,
scrolling in the morning a ritual.
Life is meant to be reality,
but when the only life you can see is trapped
inside the screen,
we’re living virtual realities,
with live data streams and pixelized dreams.
Please toss your timelines.
Your life should not be confined to the memories of Snapchat and Vine,
toss your timelines and do things in your time,
in real time,
not Facetime.
Pixelized lives, living lies, hiding behind fictitious disguise.
Remember you can pick what you share,
and choose truths not lies,
choose not to share it all
and save some living for you.
What’s out there, stays there,
and they didn’t say that just to scare,
because when clouds mean something
other than the sky above our heads,
something bigger than the sky above our heads,
know the depths of this data world
is a world we’ll never know,
and never fully comprehend.