reading room
they want to put you in the WALL-E chairs
1 body trying to carry more information than it was built for
2 kinds of tiredness: the human kind and the modern kind — the kind that settles behind the eyes and stays there
3 republics collapse repeatedly: Rome, America, the endless scroll of personalised feeds
4 hours average sleep for the people I love most
5 seconds before my thumb skips an ad unless it already knows which loneliness to touch
6 taps open: weather, war, music, someone crying publicly, someone pretending not to, groceries
7 billion people moving together through bright stations and office buildings, heads bowed slightly towards glass
8 hours of labour to afford conveniences meant to dull the exhaustion they require
9 times out of 10 the feed understands me correctly
the tenth feels almost intimate
10 years ago we feared artifical intelligence would become human
instead, humans became legible
11 notifications waiting before breakfast
12-year-olds learning how to watch people die without sitting up
13 advertisements learning to say hey in the voice of someone who misses me
14 seconds to feel something before the next thing arrives already glowing
15-second clips where somebody dies beside a recipe for iced coffee
grief beside relief horror beside lifestyle
everything flattened to the same rectangle
16 hours awake and still my hand lifts automatically towards the phone
17 recommendations beneath the video
for insecurities I did not have last week
18 moments today where instinct arrived before thought
19th century factory owners would have wept to see labour follow workers home inside their pockets
to see the body remain useful even while lying down
20 fingers across keyboards
the feed beginning to feel like prayer
21 grams supposedly lost when the soul leaves the body
though lately it seems more gradual:
notifications
autoplay
predictive text
small continuous surrenders of posture, attention, silence
22 playlists made for nights like this one
23 times I almost disappeared offline
24-hour connectivity: phones vibrating softly beside sleeping bodies
25 million views on a video titled WHY YOU FEEL EMPTY
26 letters in the alphabet and still no good way to describe becoming visible mainly to machines
27 browser tabs open around the bed late into the night
28 days later the outrage cycle repeats itself
the scrolling continues
29 corporations telling me to breathe through sponsored content
30 pieces of information exchanged before a page fully loads
31 ways to fall asleep with the phone still glowing
32-bit childhoods remembered brighter than they ever looked
33⅓ RPM: a vinyl record spinning slowly while the century accelerates beyond recognition
34 unread messages and my hand grows heavier each time the screen lights up
35 years old and some people have not encountered silence uninterrupted for more than a few minutes
36 billion tonnes of carbon yearly
and the next video still sliding upward beneath my thumb
37 comments saying touch grass beneath a livestream of somebody having a breakdown
38 soft little conveniences accumulating around the spine until standing up starts feeling theatrical
39 products recommended specifically for me
none of them correct
40-hour work week, invented before humanity decided every waking moment should contain information
41 minutes average screen time before the first involuntary dissociation
42 answers generated instantly
0 instructions for remaining a person inside all this
and somewhere beneath the light leaking from bedrooms, beneath the endless stream of comfort and personalised mercy,
autoplay continues without asking
while my thumb hovers above the next video
long enough that I no longer remember choosing
— Lilith