The actress from the TV show
tells the other actress from that same TV show
she’s a fraud and an opportunist and
complicit with the evil in town and
how she threw a huge tantrum
on-set twenty years ago and was hell to work with. 

While the next day, both actresses attack
the even younger actress from the new reboot
of their same TV show who says both of them
are evil bitches and why can’t they just be nice
like the third actress from the original show
who hasn’t even said anything publicly, but was so kind
privately, and why can’t they just realize their time has passed
and to be happy for someone else -- in this case her?

And then reply, then respond, then rebut, then react,
then retweet, then subtweet. 

My eyes glaze over and graze the buffet of images
in the adjacent column: 50+ age-defying bikini bodies,
scruffy exits from luxury rehabs, politicians toasting
champagne on pristine white super-yachts,  
eating disorders, nervous break-downs, new babies,
an ass-baring risqué outfit during a casual stroll
to the grocery store.

How have I ended up here again? 

I swear, I never start off by googling “Phil Collins divorce” or
“Offset’s baby mama” -- I swear, I always enter the internet
with the clearest, the purest, the most intellectual of intentions,
like research for a project I’m doing or exploring the body of work
of an artist I admire or collecting tips to improve my physical-mental-
psychic-social-emotional-spiritual health or to check if
we are still indeed in this living nightmare of a pandemic --
which I do about twenty times a day and let me tell y’all --
it is still goin’ on. 

But of course, I also use the internet to keep up with people,
whom I have met at some point in the real world.

For example, I zoomed with a poet I know earlier this Spring,
and we realized we hadn’t spoken in real life in 7 years --
“Surely, it couldn’t have been that long,” we both laughed
through our computer screens -- I’d seen her posts about 
her setlists, her airplane rides, and what she had for breakfast
-- apparently for 7 years -- before either of us noticed
that we hadn’t actually talked to each other at all.   

I mean, come on, what counts as real life anymore, anyway? 

I will side with the U.S. government on this --
It is all Big Tech’s fault. My current inability to discern
reality from unreality is due specifically to the
irresponsible and manipulative behavior of a certain group of
socially awkward, emotionally stunted Bay Area coders who are
right now playing ping pong and napping on bean bag chairs
in grey hoodies and Allbirds shoes, downing bottles of
Mint Chocolate Soylent in between venture capital meetings
and drafting the digital architecture to control and decimate
the future of everything, thus reconfiguring the
very last shreds of our fabric of humanity.

Hey you, techies! No, I do not want an electronic chip put into my brain,
and I don’t want to go into outer space either. 

Why -- you may ask -- have I abdicated my own access
to the outside world to these individuals? Don’t I have agency?
Free will? An unfettered independently functioning mind?
Maybe it’s because it’s already in my pocket. Or maybe it’s because
it’s awake when I can’t fall asleep. Maybe it’s because it always answers
when I call. Or maybe it’s because I’m not really as non-conformist
as I would like to think, and because, well, everybody’s doing it --
I’m addicted -- I mean, everybody’s doing it. 

There are no coincidences:

I am trailed. I am tracked. I am dissected. I am instigated.
I am a million data points sold to the highest bidder.
I am picking through which selfies to post in order to sell myself to myself.
I am in a role-playing game and the role I am playing is me or some version of me.
I’ve rewritten my memories to match my timeline.
My sincerity is for sale. My person is the product.
I pray to the ancestors for guidance, but what do the ancestors have to say about
data mining and algorithmic black boxes?  

I try to tell all of this to people and realize I have transformed
into full-blown crazy New York lady:

You have to understand. It’s not just the Man anymore.
It’s the bots. The bots. They’re scrambling our brains.
PUT AWAY YOUR PHONE. THEY’RE LISTENING TO US RIGHT NOW.

I blink, and I’m back at the computer again --

The epidemiologist from the health institute
says the epidemiologist with the big Twitter following
is a fraud and an opportunist and
complicit with the misinformation in our nation and
how he’s a hack because his Ivy League degree
is in child nutrition and not infectious disease.

While the next day, both epidemiologists attack
the government epidemiologists who say
they only lifted precautions early because they were
following the science and the data kept changing
while the medical expert on TV -- who happens to be
on the board of the pharmaceutical company -- says
the government epidemiologists are too late to the game
but assures this will all be over soon with a smile that
makes you wonder who can you really trust  --  in this case him? 

And then reply, then respond, then rebut, then react,
then retweet, then subtweet. `

Hey -- people of the internet -- 
Why are we arguing so damn much? 

Who’s holding the cosmic scorecard?
What do we get if we win? 

Responsibility ricocheted --
Why are we all under siege ducking for cover? 

Each person’s hands crafted for blame --
we’ve forgotten how to use them to reach out to each other
to build to hold to cure to create to soothe  

Each of us -- the hero of our own endless fairy tale -- wielding
a gigantic sword of light for all others to bow down to  

I click around on my screen and know there are real people
in there still -- someone had to take those photos, another
styled the makeup, someone had to email those words,
another agonized over those publishing timelines, tired eyes
pored over the edges of those pixelated graphics, caffeinated fingers
typed and retyped code for widgets, dozens of emails
were sent and received to place every single ad.

All these people in the machine of communication -- 
the army of effort to get these bits of information before my eyes -- 
still, the impossibility of communicating the person

The one who lost someone 
The one who is scared
The one who doesn’t understand
The one who is doing the best they can
The one who says fuck it all
The one who wishes this would all go away 

I click my mouse on every inch of my screen
and repeat to myself: 

real person
real person
real person

somewhere