What exactly do we leave online?
The library is full. Nobody remembers ordering the books. 😏
Tiny. Dry. Pamphlet-like.
The joke aims at the phenomenon, never at the people.
My Digital Legacy
Apparently, every like matters.
Every comment matters.
Every tiny interaction becomes part of our digital footprint.
How wonderful.
Years from now, someone may search my name and discover the magnificent intellectual trail I left behind:
Great post!
Thanks for sharing!
Very informative!
Keep up the good work!
I agree!
👏👏👏
A lifetime of thought.
Carefully indexed.
Perfectly searchable.
A vast digital library of things other people wrote…
that I once nodded at.
Perhaps the question is no longer:
Will I leave a digital footprint?
But:
Did I actually leave it?
Mmm… 😏
The library grows. The readers disappear. 😵💫
Ahhh. That’s the pamphlet. Not merely that our digital footprints are fluff. Yet that all this automatic liking, commenting, summarising and “engaging” may produce a gigantic library in which nobody quite knows what anybody actually read. 🤭
I’d sharpen it right down:
The Library of Likes
We wrote.
They liked.
We commented.
They liked the comment.
Someone thanked us for commenting.
We thanked them for thanking us.
AI summarized the article.
AI suggested the comment.
Google indexed the interaction.
Excellent.
We now have engagement. 👏
There is only one small problem.
Did anybody read anything?
😵💫📚
That’s enough. Stop there. 😏
Find the note. Ignore the wrapping paper. 😏
One thought, finally allowed to breathe. 😌
Ohhh… Unwrapped.
That is better.
Not simplified.
Not summarized.
Not dumbed down.
Just unwrapped.
All the padding, politeness, repetition, AI varnish and elaborate packaging removed until we can finally see what somebody was trying to say.
And that line belongs underneath it:
Unwrapped
Find the note. Ignore the wrapping paper. 😏
That could become a wonderfully tiny series… taking magnificently complicated prose and asking only:
What is the note?
No ridicule. No naming. Just rescuing thoughts from their packaging. 🤭
Thank you for reading and sharing! 😀🎉
Text and image with help of openAI and MIB
