"THRESHOLDS" — A CYCLE IN TWELVE PARTS
The app delivers a notification
like a fortune cookie
stuffed with malware –
a tiny prophecy
wrapped in a cheerful chime.
“Someone viewed your profile.”
“Someone blocked you.”
“Someone unblocked you
for reasons the system
refuses to disclose.”
It feels like living
in a digital village
where the town crier
is a crow
dropping spoilers
from a power line.
A greyed‑out circle appears –
not a profile picture,
but an eclipse
of my social self‑esteem.
A shadow where a face should be,
a doorway where the light
forgot to show up.
A deleted comment
flutters past
like a bureaucratic ghost
filing paperwork
in the Ministry
of Vanishing Things.
And somewhere between
“seen” and “not delivered,”
my humanity is queued
behind system updates
and a spinning wheel
that never quite decides
what I deserve.
Still, I refresh the page –
not out of longing,
but out of ritual,
the way one checks
whether a ghost
has remembered
its manners.
Apr 8
Apr 8, 2026 at 12:16 PM UTC
"THRESHOLDS" — A CYCLE IN TWELVE PARTS
The app delivers a notification
like a fortune cookie
stuffed with malware –
a tiny prophecy
wrapped in a cheerful chime.
“Someone viewed your profile.”
“Someone blocked you.”
“Someone unblocked you
for reasons the system
refuses to disclose.”
It feels like living
in a digital village
where the town crier
is a crow
dropping spoilers
from a power line.
A greyed‑out circle appears –
not a profile picture,
but an eclipse
of my social self‑esteem.
A shadow where a face should be,
a doorway where the light
forgot to show up.
A deleted comment
flutters past
like a bureaucratic ghost
filing paperwork
in the Ministry
of Vanishing Things.
And somewhere between
“seen” and “not delivered,”
my humanity is queued
behind system updates
and a spinning wheel
that never quite decides
what I deserve.
Still, I refresh the page –
not out of longing,
but out of ritual,
the way one checks
whether a ghost
has remembered
its manners.
A gently absurd reflection on how social media turns silence, absence, and mixed signals into their own strange kind of ritual.
