Clearly, I needed to get something off my chest. It all started after a crowded bus ride after a crazy day at work, then sitting at a franchise hair-cutting place waiting my turn, looking across the parking lot at a sign on a fitness club that said, “Somewhere to Belong”. I took up my pen and notebook and this happened:

The Age of Idiots
by Ronald Kok
We all need somewhere to belong
But do we all belong somewhere?
Some of us drift, carried on an internet stream
Friends defined by who likes our randomly censored lives on Facebook

Is anyone thinking of you now? Right now?
As you sit unplugged and unconnected.
Lost

When you are far from trending
Do you stop existing? Stop being?

Does your skin and bones and hair count for anything?
Virtually nothing, virtually

This world has grown small and small-minded
It no longer smells of soil, tastes of air
Fingertips stroke plastic far more than skin
People become flat and bodiless
Become trolls
Become nothing to you

May be they are next door
Who knows? Who cares?

In touch like never before
The distance between us never greater
Stuck to the same Web
Squirming

Seems there is no way to untangle
We all get consumed
Sucked dry
Withered

Life is lived skin on skin
On the tongue, in the ears, under the feet
Life is moving, growing, changing
What is this then if not death?
Static, unreal, pixilated
Manipulated, creeped
Viruses our greatest fear
Fear now digitized, everywhere

Information Age is the Age of Idiots
The Unenlightenment it may be called
Or the Era of Inertia
How proud we will be
Consumers who are constantly consumed

We may all die of consumption
Many die daily depending on
Likes and followers and hashtags and shares
What possesses us to desire
Smoke and mirrors?
Snake oil?
The Kool-Aid we’re given to drink?

I’m as guilty as you
As my fingers stroke this keyboard
As I stare at a screen
As I post this photo, this thought, this meme, this bit of forgettable crap
For what? I need to know
And find the good at the heart
Of this Age of Idiots
Of this time of my idiocy