Feed

by M.T. Anderson

I don’t know when they first had feeds. Like maybe, fifty or a hundred years ago. Before that, they had to use their hands and their eyes. Computers were all outside the body. They carried them around outside of them, in their hands, like if you carried your lungs in a briefcase and opened it to breathe.

Because of the feed, we’re raising a nation of idiots. Ignorant, self-centered idiots.

You know, I think death is shallower now. It used to be a hole you fell into and kept falling. Now it’s just a blank.”

“I wanted someone to know me. I thought it would be like when you’re finally tied to the dock.”

But there’s always time to change. There’s always time. Until there’s not.

It was like I kept buying these things to be cool, but cool was always flying just ahead of me, and I could never exactly catch up to it.

“We Americans,” he said, “are interested only in the consumption of our products. We have no interest in how they were produced, or what happens to them” — he pointed at his daughter — “what happens to them once we discard them, once we throw them away.”