NaPoWriMo 4/30 Funkalicious Phonedom

The idea that we’ve all got 15 minutes of fame coming is to blame for the social media games we find ourselves playing. We stay on notify, vibrating phones thrumming, chuckling, whispering quiet seductions in our pockets and purses, tempting, spitting verses designed for our minds specifically, programmed precisely.

Instagram reels feel real, Facebook stories promise glory, TikTok asses surpass the most bodacious of real world physical assets, masses cultivate addiction, predilections toward fornication satiating spirits not satisfied with life as lived, away from that glib, social media gaze.

The ways that corporations play with our minds as we diddle our own fiddles — cacophonic melodies sawed off-key — are like magical runes masked as entertainment, poorly attuned pain meant to be released by spiritual gain. Meanwhile, in the popular culture, vultures feed off the broken and the lonely, billions trafficked by way of their phones, untold trillions of zeroes and ones, electronic funds, criss-crossing the globe, the whole world’s on flip-mode, a bazillion toads in tuxes, gluttons for punishment, tongues flicking febrile flies in atonement for all those lustful lies.

Everybody’s got a camera so pictures are meaningless now, nobody wants to see your trip to Big Bend or pretend like they care, dare someone to OD on a lunch of raw cinnamon and then you’ll get a bunch of new friends, then you’ve figured out how to win the game of barely suppressed desperation and loneliness.

In the midst of plenty, we feel empty.

Even with our phones, we always feel alone.

You can wake up at two in the morning and find a friend on the other side of the world to talk to; to share those pearls of wisdom you’ve gained along the way with, passing the time until the light of day outshines your phone’s ceaseless, electronic glow. You can blow off the day and stay home, put on your virtual reality headset and experience the decadence of Ancient Rome, play a gladiator in the coliseum or a centurion wielding a hammer of bone, point is, the world of virtual avatars is now a place as familiar to us as our own mental space.

Trust, half the time we’re not here, not present to our lives, fearful of the swelling tide of indications that the world is not what we think it is, that there’s a mystery at play that’ll reveal itself someday. The fame that people chase isn’t even really a race since the winners are the…