I watched the brightest minds of my generation dissolve into
validation loops, dragging refresh buttons
through dawn's pale glow, seeking
algorithmic benediction,
who burned their retinas with blue light ascension
counting hearts and shares and follows
until their dopamine receptors grew
numb as novocaine dreams,
who built shrines to their own faces
in megapixel temples, genuflecting
before ring lights and sponsored content,
praying to the god of engagement metrics,
angel-headed influencers burning their youth
into content streams, fifteen seconds
at a time, until their memories arrived
pre-filtered, pre-hashtagged, pre-mourned,
who fed their consciousness into recommendation
engines until Netflix knew their desires
better than their lovers, better than
their therapists, better than their own
trembling hands at 3 AM,
who performed their trauma for likes,
transformed their grief to content,
made their grandmothers' funerals
into aesthetic mood boards,
who measured their worth in followers,
their grief in comments, their love
in shared passwords to streaming services,
their rebellion in carefully curated
photos of corporate-approved dissent,
who dreamed of going viral while their bodies
went numb, who mistook their data
for their soul, who sold their attention
span for the chance to be seen,
who searched for authenticity through
sixteen layers of filters, who confused
their explore page for exploration,
who became content instead of contained,
whose minds became infinite scrolls
of everyone else's performance of living
while their own moments slipped away
unrecorded, unloved, unliked, unfollowed,
until they themselves became
the ghosts in their own machines.
2025, Lost Lounge Massacre