The Digital Peasant

Scroll, Swipe, Share, Post, Click,Block, 

Welcome to the kingdom of digital fiefdom, 

Where you sell and buy your freedom,

Freedom of expression -

Oh, really?! 

Or, you just choose to obey a coded algorithm?

That is intended to intensify their outlook,

The masters of digital world, 

The lord 'Darnleys',

Engaged into the plot of 'Pride and Prejudice ',

Anointed to sing the rhythm of holy trinity!

Scroll, swipe, obey-

My finger types where once it used to plough the lands, now it is riding through the white and black dashboard - a celluloid screen,

A grey bluish screen, 

That can be altered, customized to my wish!

Oh, I have the slightest freedom, I see!

No soil beneath, no sky above,

 I give my time, all my attention, my driven focus, an untamed energy, for a few likes and reactions,

Where harvest grows in mere love signs and meaningless comments and interactions, 

Inviting insignificant connections, 

I count my blessings measuring how many clicks and how many hails are-

hawking over my posts, 

Or, supervising me through!

A castle made of silicon reigns,

Where lords wear tuxedos and code in chains,

Their thrones are apps, their gaze-a touch screen,

Their power veiled in a bright blue chin, 

I feed the feed that feeds on me,

I feed the feeds that checks on me, 

I feed the feeds that feeds my fragile ego- and time to time it wins,

I feed on the feeds that are left alone, 

I feed the feeds that are left unchecked,

An unbothered, unfiltered, and uncensored lad grabs my attention unimaginably, 

The unfed me goes through the supervillainized surveillance, captivating lens through the veils of the digital lords,

Me a digital peasant from a distant land mostly unseen and unheard of is now censored,

A serf who dreams in 5G spree is now controlled by the speed of 6G's and above,

I gift my thoughts, my time, my face-

In the faceless applications, where fame can be bought, 

In return, an automated place is revered in a supersonic pace at a digitalized age without any grace-

I succumb on the bread crumbs!

Crumbling on my fortunes! 

Yet, my visibility is restricted-

Owned and disowned,

Disguised and disapproved,

Vowed and disavowed, 

Wowed and unbowed, 

All at the same time, 

They blurs me- for who I am,

My authentic voice is voiced over!

My feed laid over, 

Lent and leased, 

Unleashing me squirming about the unauthorized occupation,

Lost under the surveiling operations-

Of selfhood,

Sometimes 'the self' is the biggest operator, 

A filter- carefully processing the filtration,

What that Darnley wants out of me-

I ponder, and exactly the same I deliver!

I am sick of all forms of 'Centrisms',

Had been accused of chivalrysm,

Cheering over for my thought companions atleast I thought, 

I freely handover my ideas to them,

Risking my originality to those,

The apps, the tools, the media-

Draws my attention, 

For I fear missing out any new information in the world of informatics-

Hot and new,

For every news has an effect on my nerves,

For every sound caught on my eardrums,

For every views blurs my intuition,

I am exhausted of knowing too much-

Loaded with information! 

In loneliness these champions-

Yet, I can not escape the charms and shamanism-

The magic that it offers me-

Healing and unhealing- in an unsealed,  unwrapped, and unaware version-

Intrusively implosive and an unplugged visualization!

They quite help me to remove the burden and heaviness of the lonely wandering soul-

But, again, they impose the hidden rules over me- I am imprisoned! 

All day and all night along-

I am clinged, glued to my cell phone!

As if I have sold my soul to the celluloid, 

My bones to the cell phone, 

I would not like to reimagine my life without it-

A digital shaman it must be!

A ritual!

No wage is paid, no tax is imposed, no voice is heard,

Just algorithms that herd the herd,

The unheard, untouched, and unbounded ones are bothered now, 

As the herders are herding data, 

I so freely give all my information of my whereabouts, to the data gatherers, 

The hunters of our time,

I do not protest, nor do I fight or invite for a duet or revolution, 

I have been quietly  observing the evolution -

Of the land feudalism to tech- feudalist operations!

I do not bleed, yet still I give-

My soul to scrolls that bid me to live,

To thrive under the fallacies  of life,

I bravely disown them and multiply disowoned by them for the algorithms, 

They can not reach me, I can not reach to them, 

The unknown punition I do pay for the arbitrary attribution, 

No whip no swing no sword, 

No death hangings not any incarcerations,

But, Dopamine, the mighty ring,

A feudal charm of the android application-

That gets me struck with an ultimate elucidation, 

A manoeuvristic seduction at play- the celluloid reincarnation, 

Upending upon the sanctions-

Creating a digital divide-

A division, disproportion,and disorientation!

Denial of truth?!

Let's meet with the cheap content-

So free, so available! 

So applauded, for it catches the sparkling eyes with the dazzling spirits,

Free rhythm, dance and styles, 

Consumerism consumed and preached at its peak,

Where absorption of knowledge becomes a tool for oppression, 

I am playing with fire in shadows,

Surveilled in joy, I dance in glass- in prisms,

An unknown pawn in the data class,

I checkmate the system, 

So does the system fuck me around,

On and on, on board,

Oh, digital Lord, I bend, I kneel-

Not out of faith, but for a shadowed deal.

You own the path, the code, the key-

And call this theatre a light blue skyline-

 “Being free.”

I sold my freedom long ago,

Way back in the 90's, 

What you see is the shell of freedom-

Customised, circumcised, and costumed,

Yet somewhere still, my mind resists,

Among the ads, beneath the lists-

A whisper says, This isn’t fate,

That freedom isn’t just curated,

Let servers fall, let screens go blind-

What lords can’t own is still the mind,

The mind of the forsaken ones,

The mind of the protesters,

But, definitely not the minds of the imposters,

The minds of the unvoiced ones laying their voice igniting blaze in the digital race so benign,

So above but also beneath, 

Underneath but within, 

Above and below,

Grinded in the mid-ground, 

Not reaching you, nor your sanctions, 

In a quite sanctuary, they don't quit,

Out of your observations they play like a pawn-

The masterminds - turning into a queen in a blink at the end of the house!

Checkmate! 

All the puzzles solved, perhaps, not, 

And if one voice, unindexed, rings,

And, blows your fouled breath-

A trillion truths may grow from strings,

Out of strings binding the unseen strings of all, 

Disavowed, Disapproved and Disposed of, 

Truth shall occur from the trash boxes you unload!

Unimaginable and unthinkable, 

Yes truth shall prevail after the long derails, 

Deprivations and divisions in the landscape should collapse, 

Digital devices upholding true desires,

Sometimes lost like an embellished civilization that once flourished in books and Van Gogh's portraits ,

Lost under the surveillance of the digital lords in the broad spectre of digital apartheid, 

Frightened is each soul-

Like a rat hidden in the hole, 

A tiny little mole!

In the supersonic pace of the age of the digitalized motion- the brightest and the goatest of all now are freckled, 

Gone unnoticed, unchecked and untitled,

Vanished or blurred in the blurry slurry of the cold stares of the digitalized  lord,

A bunch of pawns are released to attack,

Unlabeled and unnamed -

Untamed and impoverished-

Yet the the throne of digital lords shake-

Shivers in a silver fever that would be known as 'Digital Renaissance', 

Cause all souls  of each peasants are growing tired of your old tactics, 

They are mostly awake and aware of your falsehood. 

The unpopular and unwanted are reigning in the minds of real people,

They have created a world- an underworld different from the showcasing shallow world out of curated image and coded algorithm. 

Their digital throne of propaganda and unending manipulation is gradually shaking-

For a silvery epidemic to be known as 'The digital awakening',

Cause, this time not everyone is sleeping, 

They are largely awaken and not anymore screwed over,

Walking through the eggshells they have learnt about your tactics, 

No more silvery shines in the shrine, 

No more heavy syllables labelled, 

They do not want to read the chosen syllabus, 

Instead they want to give a read to the unfollowed  gimicks and travellers,

They now know about the bias and partiality that is plated in the table, 

They refuse to eat anything served cold or hot without testing the appeasing pallets, and bone-broth,

They want to be in the minds of the 'real minds' who have picked themselves from the shared selves- 'the real me' is severed from 'the pick-me' syndrome, 

They have brilliantly confronted the epidemic,

Posthumously or in most humanly ways,

They have conquered!  

The 'digital sickness'-

Can we ever overcome?! 

Or, how do we do so?

Are we even immune to it?!

The lords shivering in the silvery fever-

But, again, we are grappled by it and crippled by the shock waves, 

We feel useless and utterly out of blue if we have no presence here- ugh, the fear of missing out and forgetfulness!  

We fear that our absence will wipe out our once celebrated presence,

What an obscene abyss we are fallen into! 

Like an emergency call, emerging-

We are sharply emergent-

Vibrant and vigilant, 

Just to leave our imprints, footnotes in the digital world- now not severed from the real,

Digital kingdom has become the real world, 

We are abiding by the rules of It's creators!

Oh, I am so sick of all the 'Centrisms', 

That is not centered on my being and happenings, 

My becoming is plunged by the plague of all these detours and centrisms,

Either the 'Techno-centricism' or the 'Eurocentrism' or 'West-centrism', 

My 'Eastern and South' voice is suppressed and trampled, left-over,

They do not want to hear us, 

Look upon our views, 

They do not want to give us a seat, 

So we are provoked to bring our own,

They do not want to give us space, 

So we tend to curve our own, 

They do not want to give credit,

So we acclaim our own worth, 

We acknowledge ourselves and our voice-

It's renounced,

It's renovated-the uproar!

©® Farheen Bhuiyan Nancy 

Time Frame: 1.03 pm, MIST, Mirpur Cantonment, Dhaka-1216.