Digital Persona

Cave wall shadows. Plato warned us. Like Prince Prospero’s Abbey. A cyber-dominion of masquerades. Anonymity is a collective loneliness. Electronic patches and flickers that we create. The naked selfies exposing our genitals. Neon carnival signage of our disposable selves. White nationalists and conspiracy theorists. They savor a bloodthirsty authority to incite. Nameless silhouettes that sway against the wall. These figments were once billed as democracy. Like oil, an indiscriminate flood of marketplace ideas. But we are still constrained by cave chains. We are children of apparitions and appearances. We prefer the dimness of our dreams to the brilliance above us. We believe our enslavement is safety. Our narcotic electronic contours are our engagement, our toy selves. Our faces stare hypnotic at cellphones, our glitter boxes. Our façades on laptops convince us of who we are. We enter new chatrooms, new social networks like drunks. We think we know who we are in our costumes. We think we know our friends, lovers and enemies. But there is great danger in the endless party. The peril of the red death awaits us behind our masques. Published Tuck Magazine 04/2019.