2025.010
Are the beetles singers in Central Park unemployed? I wonder as I walk down my usual path through strawberry fields. I imagine robots wearing fingerless gloves & strumming the guitar in 20-degree weather. These singers would work from home, sing in the warmth of a centrally heated apartment. The fantasies of the second machine age have been entirely debunked at this point, with extremely intelligent people coming on YouTube & admitting that the capacity of robots is nowhere near where we expected them to be despite what we see in Marvel or that one movie where Scarlett Johansson transforms from really hot to a big computer.
As I search "how to style shoulder-length hair" on Instagram & go through videos of exceptionally beautiful women with Dysons & sparkling oils, I see videos of burning homes in LA as if the algorithm knew a woman looking to pay for overpriced hair products would donate instead if shown the right content. Perhaps this is how straight white men (liberal) felt when they witnessed crying lesbians on social media after the election. Essentially, it's a feeling of sadness because I think as humans, we are intrinsically uncomfortable with grief in our fellow humans' lives. But there is an extant pointlessness in being a witness, not a victim in a case of tragedy. It feels emotionally fraudulent to say that I have sincere feelings about an event that is merely psychological to me, when my apartment is janky but flameless nonetheless.