SOMEWHERE THERE IS AN ALGORITHM FOR US

by Lauren Wellman

Cartoon by Joe Dator

In a recent blog post, Facebook's vice president for ads, Rob Goldman, argues his platform's users aren't its product. Even though Facebook primarily makes money by selling targeted ads based on what it knows about you, Goldman says that the real product is the ability to connect people—ads merely exist to "fund that experience." —Louise Matsakis, “Facebook’s Targeted Ads Are More Complex Than It Lets, On,” Wired, April 25, 2018

Leverage my every click Facebook, stalk me
Through the virtual world, tangled up in social
bots. I don’t want to disappear and I want
To disappear. You get me, you got me. I’m yours.


Do you know me better than I know myself?
Do you detect my every dopamine shift and predict,
My hungry clicker is ready for a gambling binge
in Vegas? Right now, interjects dope man, fly for $149!


This is how we roll, oh, nerd daddy, it’s on--invisible
soothsayer, insomniac confessor, my dealer.
You know what I like (thumbs up!). That’s why we stay,
candyboy, on good terms. My soul, among billions

of users, a digital refugee spilling its whispers
to data miners for pesos on the bitcoin.


Currently based in Oaxaca, Mexico, Lauren Wellman is a scrivener at Bland Alchemy, Inc.

HEADLINE: DONALD TRUMP RETWEETS POST WITH QUOTE FROM MUSSOLINI

by Lauren Wellman

Donald Trump decided to retweet a Benito Mussolini quote originally posted by Twitter bot that Gawker had made several months ago, expressly for the purpose of goading Trump into retweeting a Benito Mussolini quote. In sending out that one little tweet, Donald Trump proved the point we had in mind when we created that bot: to show that Trump’s rhetoric is often indistinguishable from that of history’s most vainglorious and authoritarian fascist dictators—Benito Mussolini, specifically. –Gawker, March 1, 2016

"It is better to live one day as a
lion than one hundred days as a sheep,"
Benito Mussolini railed. Has a
retweet awakened people from their sleep?

What Donald Trump, il Duce, quick observes--
his own reflection, parody revealed
("It is better to reign in hell than serve
in heav'n," from which John Milton's Satan's sealed)--

Is stained in colors of malignant love
of self profound. Releasing greenhouse gas
in every bite of sound, he sends above
such fumes that trap all reason under glass.

Now long from paradise the nation lost,
the world's sheep won't pay the lions' cost.


Lauren Wellman is a writer and editor living in Tijuana, Mexico. Her poetry has been published in The Bitter Oleander, City Works and the San Diego Poetry Annual.