Sunday, October 30, 2011

Facebook Redux


image borrowed from bing

FACEBOOK REDUX

Facebook didn’t depose Mubarak
the army deposed Mubarak
with the help of unarmed people

Facebook doesn’t depose
it poses
but in Egypt it was better than the telephone
and it still is in countries
where the police isn’t on Facebook yet
(there is no such country: Facebook is the police)

in the U.S. where everybody is on Facebook
pretending to be just hanging out
discussing the quirks of their dogs
their tastes in music and what they want in a mate
Facebook is just pixel puff off a virtual dog
its data bots eat your brain and make you buy stuff
and if you make a move that looks vaguely human
Facebook arrests you and connects you to Twitter
LinkedIn and other social groups
where communication will rehabilitate you

for a writer Facebook is especially deadly
a novelist mining for stories will run only into lies
there are no smells and no skin
a poet is quickly bored by the nanitudes mouthed there
an essayist meets there only herm public face
and whatever looked real in reality
(which wasn't much)
is secretly spirited away from your soul
and made into zuckerbergs

mr zuckerberg laughs all the way to the bank
as he eats them
it’s always sunny on sugar mountain

I quit Facebook
I felt lighter already
I looked for my friends at the bar
couldn't find them
but look: a real dog is falling in love
with a fire hydrant!

Andrei Codrescu

Posted over on Poems and Poetics

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