Social Media – Julie Sequoia Webb

Cancel America
Our cancel culture
Where we can no longer make mistakes
All errors are now public
Forever recorded with high stakes
Forcing us to be censored
Compelling us to be fake

We all must agree
Apparently, that’s the rule in 2020
We can’t have diversity
Of thought, of option
That would be considered a sin

You must say the right thing
Suppress your true feeling
Our values are virtue signaling
We are so afraid of being wrong
It’s easier just to go along
God forbid we offend someone
Say what you’re supposed to say
Ignore the obvious, the science
It’s now more important to belong
The unpopular opinion will just go away

Who gets to have a voice
And who should be silenced
A forced social execution
A quiet violence
Free speech was a milestone
But now you must make a choice
Speak freely without hesitation
Or risk losing your reputation

Whenever someone has a social platform
We dig through their closets
Looking for that one blunder
There’s got to be one
To make their career go under
Ruining lives one misstep at a time
Social shaming with no chance to rerun
Having the wrong view is a crime
The battle has been won
But by whom? Who has won?
This battle is not fun

Are there any perfect presidents?
Has any leader not made a bad decision?
Who among us has not said something dumb?
At one time we were all young
I’d like to think that we are still growing
We all are embarrassed by something we’ve said
Something we’ve done

Does every great man have a dark past?
Can we judge someone a hundred years later?
For their flaws
Erase their names from our papers
Make them pay at last
Humans have the capacity to love and hate
To build, grow, create
And to destroy, enslave, placate
Denying this is childish
We refuse to allow some to participate
As a punishment
Instead of dealing with our sad state

Cancel America
Where media is king
The only place you can say anything
Social media platforms now have the final say
Policing what we can talk about
Putting people away
How long do we pretend like this is working?

Social media has fallen into the wrong hands
It’s too complex, too big
No one understands
How to make it work best
We’ve failed the social test

Tear down all the reminders
Rename mountains and towns
Change the maps
Paint over murals
Move our history around
Dance around truths
And make it seem sound

Can history be erased?
Can we cancel all we don’t agree with?
Wipe it clean
The person who said it might be mean
But they are still here
They haven’t gone away
We can’t take away a voice
But somehow we must make them pay

The more we suppress
We fuel the flames of unrest
We must be able to have an honest
Conversation about our humanness
Our darkness
The flaws of our nation

For if we can’t be honest
If we can’t speak freely
If I’m offended by every opinion
That doesn’t suit me
How can I really listen?
Blinded by reality
We’ve become the emperor with no clothes
When we will address the actual issue
Who knows

How can we tell the truth about our history
If we can’t talk about our mistakes
Since we can’t talk about what we’ve done wrong
It has followed us all along

Cancel America
And our genocidal ways
Make all our ancestors pay
For their greed and cruelty
Double standards that haven’t quite gone away

Cancel America
Cancel our culture
False advertisement of democracy and peace
We could be honest at least
America is a vulture
That eats the poor, the less fortunate
And finds any reason to go to war
But hides it from the people
Yet we pretend that we are equal
We are happy and great
Occasionally we catch a glimpse of our fate

And we don’t like what we see
It’s like reality TV
Except it’s real
There’s no sex appeal

We can’t change by lying
We don’t learn by suppressing the truth
Let’s start by applying
What we learned in our youth

You can’t erase a mistake
We are all human
We need to have an open conversation
Acknowledge the beauty and the flaws
Acknowledge our weakness and silly laws
Hopefully, this gives us pause

To address what has gone wrong
We’ve known all along
This is just a distraction
A bad reaction

The adults have all left the room
And not a minute too soon
It’s easier to create a new problem
Then to address what we’ve failed to do

Cancel America
Cancel culture
Soon the only safe sculpture
Will be not human
In the future
It cannot take place
Can we become neutral
To save our face?

You see the world through your phone,
But do you see what’s in front of you,
Is the memory on your phone,
Stronger than the one in your mind?
You re-live the memory again and again,
But were you really there when it happened?
Preventing intimate moments,
Social interactions,
Anything uncomfortable,
Boredom.
The screen holds all our attention.

Stuck in a world’s that’s not here.
You need a new one every year,
We get them younger and younger,
Soon we’ll not be able,
To live without them I fear.
Soon if we don’t have them,
We won’t be able to get anywhere.

Are you really going to watch 2 hours of video?
Look through your 1,000 photos?

I watch the world through you,
Held up in front of me,
Two worlds, now three.
And in it I see,
Myself, humanity.
And I pity,
Those who cannot be here
For the only world we know,
Is the one right happening now.
And we are all having different experiences,
Through our screens.

But the screen is not alive.
Then what is life you ask,
Does it really need to feel, breathe, and cry?
Can you turn on a life,
And power it off at night?

You interact with it,
But does it interact with you,
In the same way humans do?
Can you feel love from a phone?
A replacement for all we’ve ever known.
Human touch.
Has become,
A game of telephone.
To the future,
Where screens sit on the throne,
Of the unknown.
Thinking for us.

And each generation,
Will take us to the graveyard of imagination.
What will become of us in social media land,
Where we don’t know how to shake a hand,
And eye contact was a thing of the past,
But maybe we can make it all last.

Can’t miss a thing,
Must capture everything.
But your not really seeing it,
Don’t you see?
Is the past the photo on my phone?
My new memory?
Do our screens connect us,
Or make us feel more alone.

It seems all the answers have
Even more questions
But don’t worry, we have many algorithms
And Google,
To tell us what to do,
What is true.
I can’t even listen to you,
Because I’m busy watching Hulu.
And Facebook and YouTube,
Snapchat and Instagram,
Filling our internal inbox with spam
Trash, spiritual poison.
But will we have a spirit when all this is done?
Because the internet has come,
And is slowly replacing our ability to love,
To connect with each other,
With nature,
But we think we are rising above.
Yet is it better?

We will never be the same.
We can’t go back from where we came.
I feel in my body, not in my phone,
I don’t want to feel alone.
I want likes, and mentions and tweets,
It feels like coming home,
To technology.
We are being conditioned,
To accept this rendition,
Of humanity.
Of love.

But when does the video stop?
Maybe when we drop
Our willingness to spend the money

When we are replaced by a virtual reality
When we lose our presence, our sanity

When we no longer have the ability to be, still

Now Instagram catches your eye,
Not the pretty lady watching by
Or the thought that you’ll die,
Not ever seeing.

Seeing with your eyes is no longer enough.

Tell me, what do you see?
Through your screen?