I want to begin this series with The Work of Mark Zuckerberg.
What a curious place to begin, you say, laughing at me. With all the places you could go, you want to write about His Work. You lean back in your chair, one hand on the table, finger tapping, smiling at me.
I do. I want to think about how One Man could be allowed, be given absolute permission to spawn, to seed, to sow, to cultivate, to grow, quite so much hatred.
Hatred? You laugh again. Where is the hatred? Yes, ok, Myanmar, but that was dealt with. You are barking up the wrong tree.
You turn to lick up that lovely, expensive, shiny black phone. I am dismissed, literally. You have binned me and now swipe up and tap on…. I lean forward….to get a glimpse.
Ah. Instagram. How very lovely.
What is your gender, have you decided? Are you a woman looking at Instagram, Facebook, the Metaverse? Or perhaps you are non-binary, maybe Trans? Or perhaps a man.
There. I can now lean back and fold my arms. I have covered all the bases.
The gaze of each of these identities is profound: For itself, upon the other, and upon the screen. And He, Mark, caters perfectly to all.
You nod, U Huh… unable to look up, your long tongue stuck to the images as they rise up out of Mark Zuckerberg’s endlessly refreshing Hell.
It is a 21st century version of a painting, a triptych by Bosch. I say.
Washing machines? You look up, confused and frowning….
No. Hieronymus. I reply.
Hmm. You stick your long tongue out again and carry on dragging adjusted, dysmorphic, dystopian, dysfunctional, images up from the Hell in which they deserve to rest.
But you, along with billions of others, have been given the magic key to raise them up, snatch a glimpse, and discard. Just like that. Filtered images of perfect lives, faces, adverts, tailored and curated moments of fantasy. Reels that long to trigger Tourette’s, idiotic, asinine, repetitive dances for 2 year olds. You can barely resist sucking your thumb and stroking your nose as you are held in thrall, glued, stuck, transfixed by utter crap. Just tiny bursts of idiocy that transfix, amuse, irritate and leave you gagging, dripping and drooling for more.
The days go by, the world turns, the sun rises and sets, and you, all of you, notice nothing, none of it. Years are passing and you see nothing. Only Hell endlessly stirring itself for your inane and pointless pleasure.
Such a clever man! How did you, we, all of us, give him so much power? A wild and wily destructive power that you are not yet aware of: it has a huge price.
That price is your relationship to your mind and body.
That price is that your gaze is tracked, your every mood is known and catered to.
The price is that you are listened to. You are transcribed.
That price is that you are now a commodity to be sold on to others.
That price is that your very own version of the internet now exists. Individually tailored to all you have been licking all this time. For you and the billions of others there truly is no big picture.
The price is that there is no freedom.
The price is the you cannot exist, in your mind, without your phone, your account, your screens.
The price is that there is no other succour:
Your mind has been hacked and sold. It is no longer yours. You no longer have access to its magical functions.
Your body is in a state of thrall to the fake dopamine produced by the licking of a world that does not exist.
You body is hunched, your shoulders ache, your neck is thrown forward, your brow is furrowed, mind is fuddled, your eyesight is damaged, jaw clenched, brain hyper-aroused and your phone is glued to your hand.
Mark is the Darling Of All. He has risen to be the Lord of the Flies, The Lord of the Body, the instagrammable body, the yoga body, the anorexic body, the perfect body. The body that you drool for and then look down and see yours, crumpled, folded, panting at the screen and instantly reject, comparing and despairing, over and over.
Endlessly addicted to this immortal, non-existent, scrolling suffering.
I kid-you-not… he laughs hysterically, all the way to the etheric bank.
You raise your face, for a moment, not even catching my eye, yours still glued…. “What did you say?” You ask me…. And you head back down again.
He hates us all. He hates every last one of us and we allow him to hate us.
We live in such curious times. How can we, as a race, bear to be hated so much? To hate ourselves is one thing and on a certain level I get it. Shame begets and spawns itself.
But to give all access, full access, all permission, to Just One Person, to hate each and every one of us quite so much is very curious.
Discuss. Please discuss. Please, really, please discuss.