"Doom Scroll"

A Poem

*Content Warnings: Depression, Self-harm, & Suicide*

“Doom Scroll”

Oh, to be free of it—
The endless
Bottomless
Ridiculous
Scroll.
Olive Garden’s
Never-ending
Pasta bowl,
Deadening soul,
Irrelevant polls,
TikTok holes,
Forever reminders
You must play
Every role.
You belong
To the silicon
Overlords. 
Obey
Or face
cutting
The chord. 

Oh, the things you feel compelled
To do—
To post
To write
To fuck
To trend
To smile
To bite
To eat away at the brains
Of fellow humans
Like dung beetles
In garbage pails.
Trolls off the rails
Elon stans
Celebrity gossip
The manosphere
Girlies 
Baddies
Year-end photo rolls
& bed rotting saddies
Slitting your own wrists
At the very thought
Of letting anyone
Witness you
Make a mistake

Making mistakes
Is not evil, they say
Just swerving
out of your lane,
Bringing up 
Old ideas
No one wants to hear
But needs to hear
Because guess what?
The intersphere
is its own universe
A once-separate reality
Now baked into
Our in-real life
Banality.
No one knows
The person
Sitting next to them
They can’t 
Bring themselves
To care one lick
About the guy—
Presumed dick—
Standing in line
In front of them.

Oh, to know a world without it—
To write
One’s thoughts
Without 
Autocorrecting
AI pushing
Some agenda.
I don’t know 
If I’m a 
Tech Optimist
But I’m 
Certainly not
An apologist.
I love to be wrong
I like to sing songs
Loudly,
Off-key. 
I wish something
Still Existed
To remind
Us how
To live
The way
Our ancestors did: 
Before factories
& street lamps
& assembly lines
& mass communication
& cable television.

Oh, what a world it once was—
Easy for me to say. 
I do not envy
human history. 
I yearn for momentary
Glimpses into
our lives
Pre-instantaneous
connection;
Some lingering
sense of mystery. 
Now, 
We are 
Too easily
Found. 
Our inner lives
Drawn & 
Quartered
By giants;
Nerd bombers
New world orders
We, pions,
Labor on
while men
we’ve never met
Consolidate
Wealth
Beyond
Anything
we could bet.
Fires burn, 
Valleys flood, 
And we
Face the music
Of what 
It means
To drown
In our own
lifeblood. 

Oh, how I long 
for our descendants
To inhabit a place
Where curiosity is treasured;
Where we do not worship
Material things. 
Where the value of
One’s existence
Isn’t measured by
Their ability 
to make money, 
but by their willingness 
To embrace discovery. 
We are creating beings, 
Critical thinkers, 
Movers & Shakers.
We were never
Meant to live
Our lives 
Behind the 
Disguise
of a screen
We need 
Communion
We need
To learn
Our Neighbor’s 
last name. 

What a world it is—
To swap pre-industrialized
Moments in the Sun
For wide-spread hysteria
And aching thumbs
But then again, 
Humans are born to survive;
To push wildly
Against the grain
Of suffering
To rebuild
To unite
To wage on and on
Until our 
Inevitable,
Unknowable
End. 

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I love the idea of this poem…the execution might need some work :D Felt like the right time to share it, though.

Thanks for reading/listening.

-Abby

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