Submit your work, meet writers and drop the ads. Become a member
Apr 7
[COLD OPEN – JERRY, STAGE, SPOTLIGHT]
ba-DOWMP bwowm-buhm

The algorithm
isn’t a friend.
It’s an ex
who remembers your weaknesses.
You liked one mango—
now it’s fruit baskets
and tropic-core girls
with ring lights and trauma.

What is “For You”?
I never filled out a form.

[SCENE: JERRY’S APARTMENT – AFTERNOON STATIC]
Kramer explodes in.
Phone in hand,
showing a woman licking a wall
with 1.2 million likes.

“This,” he says, “is content.”
Jerry: “This is crying for help in autoplay.”

“You gotta date the algorithm,”
Kramer instructs.
“A little like,
a little skip,
ghost it, come back with engagement.”

“Like Elaine at brunch?”
“No—like Elaine in an elevator.”

[JERRY STAND-UP SEGUE]
You don’t control TikTok.
You imply preferences,
like a hostage negotiating snack options.

I watched a gutter-cleaning video once.
Now I’m GutterGuy™.
It’s like being typecast
in a movie no one’s filming.

[SCENE: MONK’S CAFÉ – THE GODS CONVENE]
Elaine: “I typed ‘lol’
on a guy’s folding-shirt hack.
Now he thinks we’re married.”

George: “It was a precise fold.”
Elaine: “It was domestic competence, George.”
George sips water, quietly judging his hairline.

He opened one baldness video.
Now it’s testosterone gummies
and former athletes whispering about DHT.

Elaine: “Your phone thinks you’re balding and insecure.”
George: “It’s right.”
Laugh track. But it’s too real.

[SCENE: JERRY’S APARTMENT – NIGHT SHIFT]
All present.
Kramer’s doing a dance no one asked for.
Elaine’s muting strangers.
George is Googling “toupee AI filter.”

Jerry: “I didn’t choose my feed.
It happened to me.”
Swipe—
crying woman, bread ad,
cat in a bonnet.
Swipe—
drone strike, shoe review,
guy sobbing in a gym mirror.

Kramer: “It’s curated chaos.”
Elaine: “It’s aesthetic despair.”
George: “It’s my mother,
if she could code.”

[JERRY STAND-UP SEGUE]
Targeted ads are ghost stories.
“You still thinking about that rash?”
“You cried once at 2am.
Here’s a diffuser shaped like a mushroom.”

We’ve invented a marketplace
for moods.
An etiquette of optics.
It’s all affect—
with subtitles.

[CLOSING SCENE: PUTTY RETURNS, UNBLINKING]
“I don’t use TikTok,”
he says.
“I just watch my microwave.”

[SLOW AKWARD ZOOM TO PUTTY'S UNFLICHING STOICISM]

Cut to:
the microwave light,
buzzing.
An egg turns.

[CREDITS – BUT LOUDER, MORE AGGRESSIVE]
ba-DOWMP ba-DAHHM dowm dowm dowm
NETFLIX – now with ads.
a pilot episode, in poetic rerun

A reply to:

https://hellopoetry.com/poem/5008431/querulous/
badwords
Written by
badwords
141
       Immortality and South-by-Southwest
Please log in to view and add comments on poems