Stranger

 

I, for one, never open ‘shared memories’ on social media. The idea of a machine managing how I remember is insulting, ludicrous, disturbing, [deleted]. I stare at the invitation to a ‘shared memory’ with suspicion, suspicion redoubled each time new ones confront me on screen. I prefer the memories I have already, of friends and acquaintances the computer pretends to know something about. The computer is a stranger. It is a difficult and unpleasant and unholy stranger at such moments. My wish is that this offensive interloper would lope off to another table at the internet café and bloody well mind it’s own [deleted] business. This creep wants to hand around pictures of me having a good time with people it doesn’t know about anymore than it knows me. Is it any of its business to be [deleted] flashing these pictures about the place for anyone to make comments about? It has no way of distinguishing a boundary. Its own memory seems incapable of separating the living from the dead. Do I even need to be reminded of this ‘shared memory’, which could inspire unhappiness as much as its intention, hey-ho happiness? This stranger in my life lacks emotional intelligence. No one can get close. I doubt if assistance from sentient humans will help this [deleted] useless maze of electronics with emotions, now or anytime in the future. Sometimes I wonder what ‘shared memory’ the stranger tempts me with in this impersonal, unholy way. But it doesn’t matter, because clicking its [deleted] link is the last thing on my mind. I’m already thinking my own memories of this friend or acquaintance, real in my own mind, where I can think about them in every direction time has to offer. Fondness is a word. I will not be locked into this stranger’s version of me. Yet every time, as I communicate to my friends and acquaintances bless them!, I add more information to this monster, information it’s programmed to return to sender in ‘shared memories’. I begin to wonder what kind of relationship I have got myself into. This was not what I had in mind when I logged in to this arrangement, enticing as it was to socialise remotely, daily pictures thrown in. No warning then about entering into a false friendship with an algorithmic accident of the age. Anyway, a mirage. Because, after all, reality is preferable. The reality of flesh and blood people reading this rarified rant, people like you, friendly reader of rants. The illusion of a ‘shared memory’, what does it share? Like dreams or reflections in a mirror, I must consciously differentiate these ‘shared memories’ from the immediate and pleasant and holy memories of my own mind. Though even these are internal images and not the people I speak to, eat with, play with, embrace and kiss even, depending on who they are. Thank you for your time.