I. spotlight syndrome
Warhol said everyone gets fifteen minutes —
we traded ours for fifteen filters,
each one promising authenticity
through carefully crafted artifice.
The stage lights glare like interrogation,
bright enough to whitewash
the jagged edges we’re too scared to keep,
the parts of ourselves that won’t compress
into shareable moments.
step right up:
watch me thread my need
through the eye of a pixel,
turn my flaws into a feed-worthy highlight reel,
package my pain for mass consumption,
serve it with the right filter
to make the darkness palatable.

you like me better in halves:
authentic enough to sell,
damaged just right to buy,
a product optimized for maximum engagement,
minimum truth.

McLuhan knew :
the screen doesn’t just frame us,
it remakes us—pixel by pixel,
a collage of selves optimized for engagement,
each version more real
than the last real version
until reality becomes just another setting
we can adjust.

swipe.
scroll.
perform.
repeat until numb.
the applause is silent,
but it counts,
or at least we pretend it does
as we feed ourselves to the void.

II. glitch confessionals
this is how you pray now—
face lit by blue light,
hands clasped around a device
that knows you better than your God does ,
better than you know yourself,
better than you want to know yourself.

you refresh the page, hoping for grace,
but all you get is latency
and a chorus of strangers’ approval,
each like a tiny dopamine hit,
each share a temporary salvation,
each comment a communion
with the digital divine.

I know this because I’m there too,
another ghost in the machine,
another signal in the noise,
broadcasting my emptiness
into the collective void.

Baudrillard whispers :
the real you is already gone,
replaced by your reflection’s reflection,
a copy of a copy of a copy
until the original is just a myth
we tell ourselves existed.

we’re all spinning
in this centrifuge of curated selves,
each of us hoping
to land close enough to real
to fool ourselves,
if not others,
each rotation taking us further
from the center we can’t remember.

III. terms and conditions apply
Bowie played Ziggy Stardust ;
we play ourselves,
hoping the algorithm crowns us
worthy of trending,
desperate to be verified
in a world of deep fakes.

Musk bought Twitter for forty-four billion —
as if owning the void
could make it less hollow,
as if purchasing silence
could make it speak truth.
we watched him throw up polls
like prophets in hoodies:
“do you want free speech,
or just another filter?”
as if freedom could be measured
in retweets and ratios.

there was a time when a face was just a face,
not an interface,
when a life wasn’t a brand,
when the metrics of worth
weren’t stamped in hearts and shares,
when validation came from touch
not clicks.

now, we’ve signed away the weight of presence
for the ease of being perceived,
traded depth for reach,
wisdom for virality.
every confession becomes a caption,
every thought collapses into a hashtag,
every moment of genuine feeling
becomes content to be consumed.

McLuhan said the medium is the message .
what does that make us,
broadcasting ourselves into oblivion?
our words dissolve into noise—
signals bouncing endlessly
between mirrors,
until the origin forgets itself,
until we forget ourselves.

IV. performance notes
Warhol’s ghost circles the room,
painting Campbell’s cans
on the walls of my mind ,
mass-producing authenticity
until the very concept breaks down.
I ask him if he’s proud—
he shrugs,
because it’s all about the pose,
all about the packaging,
all about the perfect angle
to sell emptiness back to the empty.

Bowie would tell me to lean in,
sell my contradictions,
call it art,
and watch them buy it,
because even manufactured truth
is better than honest confusion.

meanwhile, I stare at my phone’s reflection,
a hall of mirrors in my pocket,
a rabbit hole of other people’s lives
where I sometimes mistake myself for someone,
where identity becomes fluid,
and reality becomes optional.

V. final transmission
if you’re hearing this,
you’ve already been sold,
already been bought,
already been processed
into digestible content.

we’re all here,
reflected in the same shattered glass:
each shard a separate version of us,
sharp enough to cut,
too thin to hold,
too fragmented to make whole.

what if McLuhan was wrong,
and it’s not the medium that matters
but the silence it erases?
the spaces between posts,
the moments we don’t share,
the truths too raw for filters.

one day we might stop.
log off.
touch grass.
look up.
remember what it means
to exist unobserved.

but tonight, just tonight,
let’s confess it together:
we need the void to see us,
to name us,
to hold its cold mirror up
and say: you’re here,
even if here is nowhere,
even if we’re just signals
in the dark.

like this signal.
share this signal.
validate this signal.

(the broadcast ends,
but the hunger persists.
it always does.
and somewhere in the static,
a real voice tries to speak,
but we’ve forgotten how to listen
to anything that isn’t trending.)