Suggested

Even back in the day, when I worked at a fast food counter, I never liked the concept of suggestive selling. With social media, it has become a high art form. In so many ways algorithms control what we do and don’t see, what we think is important, what we consider unworthy of our notice. They also assist us in the tiniest and most practical ways, to spell correctly, or to find the cheapest flight. We have to take the good with the bad, I suppose. I hope you enjoy this slightly too long ( 18 verses 14 lines) love sonnet to artificial intelligence, or AI.

AI, you take the measure of my face,

The lengths, that it departs from the ideal,

Apply that squishiness to hips, and grace

My stomach, thighs, with lesser sex appeal.

AI, you take my thoughts, my splintered words,

And from them pan for politics and grief,

And sieving sense, assault me with absurd

And cockamamie posts, with no relief.

You help complete my sentences, respell

My errors and insist I dumb it down,

For who can read beyond a fourth-grade level,

Now that the erudite becomes the clown?

As you predict my preferences and likes,

Assume, I stalk one party or the other,

Subsuming me in my own sparse profile,

Statistics, graphics, data slowly smother.

All judgment lost, I jump at your behest,

Exploring every wormhole you suggest.

Copyright 2023 Andrea LeDew

For another poetical critique of social media, read Like. For an analysis of where those wormholes may go, read Q & A.