social commentary – seeing god naked

Instagram never cared much about what my friends were posting until I stopped using Instagram.

A large part of my decision to take a break from both Instagram and Facebook was specifically because I wasn’t seeing posts from my friends and family anymore. Just before I checked out from both social media giants, I did a few counts of exactly how many posts in my feeds were from people I actually knew: on average, out of the first 30 posts, there were only two, three at most. The rest were advertisements, suggested strangers, gag reels, and random politics. I found myself scrolling through a lot of unrelated and unwanted content longing for something from the people I know and love.

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An imageless black square, often used to indicate the subject is somber or not for interpretation.

Airbrushed Ashley’s puffed lips
ask to be my Meta-friend, daily.
Josh-bot phones me on the hour
about my Medicare A and B.
A.I.’s six-digit hands scramble history
in Pixar-colored newsfeeds
where my friends used to be.
And, junk pollsters survey if I’m mad
enough to donate more and more.

This old historian
and humanitarian
vacillates
between setting the record,
comment-by-comment,
or retreating
to a good book and
the dog on my knee.

But I know isolation,
like soulless contact,
breeds despair,
and Nero fiddles
with tariffs
while America burns
out.

So, I join the struggle,
to write
something real,
wondering
if the algorithms
will expose
or bury me.