“People you may know”
After a long day
swipe through the “people you may know”
section of your social media page
Complex algorithms working hard to yield
many different people
who you could be “friends” with
It’s striking,
the range of humanity that exists
beyond your own day to day grind
Beyond your worries, your bills,
your goals, your plot of land
Such different lives each individual must lead
Every profile picture speaks so many words
Beautiful locales, funny faces, pets,
spouses, children
Such different things each individual must value
So many micro ways your own life might have been different if you
were indeed “friends” with these individuals,
with so many different lives
What matters to them? What do they enjoy?
Where and whom do they call home?
Our technologically backward ancestors
were never faced with the sea of
faces
whose lives, with one click, could become intertwined with theirs.
You wonder about the strangers, swiping across names and faces unknown
but then
the algorithms hit you with faces
you recognize
People from a lifetime ago
who you haven’t thought about in ages
who you haven’t kept up with
or who were privy to times you are
done confronting
People you left behind in a past decade
Memories rush back at the mere sight
of some of the faces
Pangs of guilt rise up at others, at
not having kept in touch
Curiosity gets the better of you
at some, and you click
on those profiles
Beware! The algorithms, they see,
and they remember
They will keep reminding you
to be “friends”
with these parts of your life that
you now call strangers
Or the strangers that make you
wonder how
your own life would have been
different, in small and large ways,
had you been friends with them.
The algorithms, they don’t know,
that unlike them, you may want
to know less
about other fellow beings
in this big social experiment
