Anti-Social Media

“These apps are psychologically dangerous for all of us.

I was here because my death seemed imminent and my story was being overwritten.

Now, whether it is or isn’t, I don’t see the efficacy of seeking understanding through technologies that I know to intentionally and expertly abuse understanding (ex. The “social” experiments meta has been pulling on our algorithms). It breeds misunderstandings, intentionally – many of which I (and others) have been heavily abused for. 

I am lucky to be alive and I am done playing with these (figurative) knives.

Love you,

Hope to see you on the other side, IRL.”

The fear of not being able to reach anyone, the daily fear of her death, being buried alive by the cover story sent X doubling back. She was addressing her addictions and her attachment to social media showed all the same warning signs.

“Cracker jacked & hacker tracked

Is a poisoned social network still safer than none at all?

Anyways, I’m back on here for now but we’ll never really know if I wrote this or they did.

The idea of the option to cry for help is a comfort even if the opposite gets sent.

If you don’t know what I’m talking about 

(I envy you)

It’s because whoever controls the pens

CNTRLs

The 

Story

(and because I’m an esoteric poet whose work invites backbitten misfired critique while left to rot in obscurity)”

Was this just a junkie mind, which knew not how to get its needs met without a fix? Nearly a year went by. She was in an echo chamber of who she could reach – mostly her family, who reverberated the trauma which had made her into something so desperate and reactionary. All her writing and socializing was in reaction to what the algorithm showed her. Here her world view was curated to one of hatred, slander, cries for help that would be filtered into battle cries. She spoke at length and was heard least of all by those who responded with derogatory critique. The curated online crowd mirrored the sentiments of her framing. X became so tired of how this form of connection made her feel so much more alone. Either her friends, family and followers were not getting the messages or they were proving that they did not care. Either way she knew she had to go. X left angry that others could use the platforms without such concerns, but she had to wonder if that was just their nievaté. Was it happening to her specifically? Or was this just how Meta worked? There was no question that these technologies had been weaponized, and she would never be able to safely talk about it while using them to get a message out against them.

Her family called her crazy based on blind belief of the profiles they learned on their feeds. They betrayed her sobriety by blaming drugs she wasn’t on. She came to realize her call to actions were subject to complex translations into actions against her. According to her algorithm, they would sooner sacrifice her than question her claims in earnest.

When X left, the apps stirred up content and old friends seeming to reel her back in. She opted to face her isolation, after her attempts to connect only ever seemed to find her more confined to space and story. She was in agony over the sociopathic abuse in her family which had gone so far as to make her isolated from the internet and the outdoors alike, and these technologies were feeding on it, provoking it with content to breadcrumb her in certain directions having over 15 years of data on what would get her to react in which ways. It took days to get rid of the apps as they and the addiction they had created fought for each other.

Then, they were gone. She was alone, just as she had always been, but now she could face it on life’s term, less of those of the technocrats. Now she hoped to recover, abandoning nearly everyone she’d ever known in hopes that someday, this way, she could find a way to be known by abandoning the breadcrumbs whose trail she’d been too starved and terrified to abandon.