Going Viral
Perhaps, it is fitting, that going viral
is considered a worthy accomplishment,
a signal of value, a demonstration
of marketing know-how,
evidence of tapping
into the zeitgeist
of a sought after
Demographic.
We live in or regularly visit
a digitally orchestrated kismet where we
consume a snackable feast of imagery, Ted Talks,
and videos of baby rescued raccoons.
Coded mathematical formulae distill our curiosity,
our pursuit of distraction, our actual or aspirational
consumption, etching them into “unique” fingerprints,
better known as the algorithms
capable of predicting our daily
Click-throughs.
In Vienna, surrounded by columnar edifice
Freud identified early childhood tension
and pleasure as foundations of who we
might become. Become, that is, if we
can find emotional comfort.
Become, that is, if we do not fall
into one or more psychosexual
Traps.
Who do you want to be?
Steve Jobs?
Do you want to wear a black turtleneck?
Do you want to think different?
Do you want to join a club that copies difference?
Do our Sunday-go-to-meeting, corporate, and blue collar
uniforms reveal or camouflage our differences?
Do they help us
Belong?
If wanting springs from being,
we are all Oedipal – wanting what Daddy has.
Dreaming of our own Mar-a-Lago,
a gilded tub, the freshest and finest,
Accompanied by the most exquisite spouse
money can buy. Isn’t having
easier than
Being?
Vigilant citizens, does your Hawaiian shirt
derive from your own tropical ancestry?
trigger colonial reminiscences and
boog-a-loo fantasies?
Does it whisper
Bahamas branded bourgeois reassurances?
Or, simply invoke a vacationer’s whimsy
and a bit of élan
after a lifetime
of dreary
Khakis?
Thanks to Madison Avenue
We dropped the Cartesian dichotomy
From Cogito Ergo Sum.
Our preference now
Cogito Ergo
Consumere.
It is easier today, not to think.
Rid of nagging thoughts,
The thinking middleman, woman and child
is free
to act on impulse.
Even better, when we are bored,
“New” Identities are available daily
to the lowest
Bidder.
But, while browsing for brands
and snuggling into our echo chambers
A pathogen was recombining to form
a 125-nanometer
spiky protein
with a unit called a receptor-binding domain
aka…the ability to enter
Humans.
Whether a zoonotic transfer
from a pangolin, civet, or bat
Or not
COVID binds to us
Irrespective of what we think
Ignoring even that we
Think.
How did a face covering of cloth
become the Trojan horse of id and I.D.?
Dividing red from blue
In a false conceit that
guarantees pyrrhic victory
unequal destruction, and
shared
Decline.
Reed MacMillan, November 28 20
All Rights Reserved.
