Off-Script (a poem)

Tuesday, February 11, 2025

The digital world moves fast. Feeds refresh, prompts pop up, permissions are granted without a second thought. It’s seamless—until it isn’t.

Sometimes, the system makes choices for you before you even realize a choice was there. It filters, it sorts, it decides. Profiles, parameters, predetermined pathways.

But what happens when you step outside of it? When you push back?

This piece is a moment of that pushback—a pause in the automated flow, a refusal to be reduced to data points.

The Ledger Notes It

The world’s collapsing—
a cascade of dialogue boxes, warning me.

Let me quit this app.
Get me out of here.
Go home.

Find a dashboard.
Let me see the big picture.
Reassess the way.

I don’t care if you’ve spoken—
I want to see it myself.

Register me.
I’m more than a cell in a database,
more than a dataset,
an array in your narrow lens,
your limited params.

Bad code.
Limited parameters.

Trying to determine what I am,
what I can do—
my agency tied to a profile.

This digital world,
rewarding and punishing,
cold algorithms calling the shots.

Let the ledger note it—
my strings are cut.

I’m off-script,
Tron fighting for the citizen user,
so they don’t lose their place
in the glory of the state.

The square pegs,
round holes,
the limitless pill—
but half of us are allergic.

The System Writes Us In

We live in a world that streamlines, optimizes, and categorizes. That isn’t always a bad thing—until it is. Until the options feel thinner, the edges more defined, the choices already made before we get a chance to make them.

Maybe this is about breaking out. Maybe it’s about noticing what’s already happening.

Either way, the ledger notes it.