Noor
By Niall Twohig
This easy essay grew out of class discussions on surveillance capitalism and the attention economy. We discussed the media bubble created by this economy - what gets in, what gets kept out, how are reality is shaped by that gatekeeping, and who profits off the gates. The conversation took a critical turn when one student described what she sees.
Doomscrolling,
we’re left empty,
left hungry.
Our feeds feed us
shiny things
glowing content
to fill the void,
wash of dopamine
washes away in a blink,
then more eye candy.
Fed from
a young age,
my students know
the emptiness, the hunger
of this Age.
What they do not know
is what you know, Noor.
What they do not see
is what you see:
Ashen mother cradling broken child.
Ashen child cradling broken parents.
Splintered ones.
Stripped bare ones.
Broken and unburied ones.
The ones without tools to mend the broken ones.
Shiny things
pushed your way
lose their luster, you say,
when pushed next to the dead.
Those you invite in
Algorithms push out
flag, filter, bury them
beyond our feeds.
Those feeds end here,
in this circle of twenty students.
Off the screen and face-to-face,
we cannot hide from you,
cannot turn from what you see,
cannot block what you say.
You unearth the dead,
raise them from the rubble,
wipe ash from their faces.
We cannot help but see the mother.
cannot help but see the child.
cannot help but see them
broken and
beyond the break.
Noor you are named.
And how fitting!
for today,
your whole being says
Let there be light!