Deserved

We deserve this world.

We deserve the “southern prideful” in Mississippi voting for a Manhattan billionaire to invest in their communities because this fucking place offered them nothing the fuck else except a Wal-Mart and a dollar store, then left them out there to fucking die.

We deserve the nigga in Chicago rounding up his own people for 50k he’ll never see because this fucking place offered him nothing the fuck else except a dead community (that already fucking died out there) and a job at the dollar store that they can’t even fucking get.

We deserve the young parent unaware of her daughter’s critical slip into depression because she “went through the same thing at that age”— a mentality that collectively led to a skyrocketing suicide rate in Gen Z and Gen A.

There’s fucking propaganda on the toaster. The microwave. The fridge. Subscriptions for subscriptions to content we love, but now surrounded in ads we hate, and now in the content itself because its an ad for the goddamn subscription you bought just to watch it.

The developed world building walls to keep out the burning people before the equator moves north.

Ongoing genocide. Promised invasion. Famine on the feed. Apathy turning into nihilism.

And I? Well, I turn on the AC. I run water. I scroll through that very content. I flip a switch and sit in peace. Knowing billions would kill me where I stand for the luxury.

I keep my comforts, but we enshittify them. I say "we" because I am part of it.

There is no neighbor. No friend. Just pockets of niche interests replacing the community. A trip to Blockbuster replaced by a bot-filled subreddit selling me more shit. Feeding me more thoughts.

We deserve this world. No one is pulling the strings. It is us. We could fix it. We just don’t want to. Or we do want to, but don’t want to get stuck pulling someone else’s weight, since we all need to pull it back together.

I say I wait for it to break so we can finally get our shit together. But the day never comes. And I’m full of shit, anyway. We act like we haven’t lost anything.

We’ve lost everything.

I am afraid to leave the house because I can’t stand pretending to trust anyone around me. Afraid to be silly in public because the camera is always rolling and I could end up on that bot-filled site. I can’t chase my dreams because I never found out what they were.

Tethered to a life lived by an algorithm. Dictating my welfare based on the patterns of people who are simply black. Or fans of a show. Or who scrolled past the same video I did.

I live in a world that doesn’t need to know me. Not even the ones I know and love. I deconstructed myself in words that they will never read. Not unless someone, anyone else, TELLS THEM it’s worth their time.

But I suppose they must not think I feel anything because they live for the propaganda. They see my comfort. They see my things.

I thought I was consuming things to share, but I realized that I live in a place where you buy shit to either give or hoard. Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for capitalism. But I’m not talking about “sharing” with strangers. I’m talking about sharing with my own damn… what? Community?

I can’t say that I’m sad. I am not angry, either. I am somewhere between grieving and bemused.

The rich. The poor. The East. The West. The currencies. The markets. The criminals. Who gives a shit?

Everybody is paying the same price: Fear.
Connected to the same thing: The Lie.

We died. I know what we look like now. I know that I chose exile for nothing. I knew it at the time.

I have my excuses. Hell, I have more than most. But excuses don’t matter.

No matter how much motion I claim, I still feel like a coward. The ones I want to reach either ignore, belittle, or avoid me.

It looks like we’re going to sit back and let it happen.

The winners will lose, and the losers won’t matter.

And we all deserve it.