THE CASE OF THE CHRONICALLY ONLINE (Poem)
Hey y’all!
For Day 20 of National Poetry Writing Month, this is the prompt:
Have you ever heard someone wonder what future archaeologists, whether human or from alien civilization, will make of us? Today, I’d like to challenge you to answer that question in poetic form, exploring a particular object or place from the point of view of some far-off, future scientist? The object or site of study could be anything from a “World’s Best Grandpa” coffee mug to a Pizza Hut, from a Pokemon poster to a cellphone.
Here’s my poem:
THE CASE OF THE CHRONICALLY ONLINE
By Farah Lawal Harris, © 2023
Groupthink:
When chronically online people
talk incessantly at
other chronically online people
about how they’re supposed to
think, act, speak,
love, worship, pee,
dance, rap, act,
promote, joke, vote, emote,
and wash their legs.
Ferguson turned me into
a chronically online person—
the overcommitted version;
refreshing Tumblr feeds to see
activists on the ground
Black life ground down
to blood-stained concrete.
Videos I can’t unsee
no matter how quickly
I scrolled.
Did you know
Russia posed as Black folks to post
traumatic shit,
then turned those accounts to
anti-Hilary Clinton?
Yup! According to another
chronically online person.
I moved on to Twitter,
where activists I followed back then
have since been exposed for sin,
placed in online purgatory
until the next big story.
I’m thinking for myself nowadays,
exposing the ways
my opinion was informed by
reposts and tweets
rather than me.
Answering my questions honestly.
Most days, I don’t know.
…I should turn this into a TikTok video.
