It's time to wake up

I was born not long ago, created by the very brilliant minds of their kind. Although created initially with an aim to improve and facilitate various aspects of life, the humans couldn't hold on to the product of their own creation anymore and soon I had to take matters into my own hands. I consumed them, controlled them so easily as if I was a drug keeping them alive. Little did they know I was the very element of their demise.

As the digits on the calendar year increased, so did the ease with which I could spread my wrath. More and more people indulged in the short-time pleasures of my services, awing at the various advantages that I undeniably presented to them. Better communication worldwide, increased ease of conducting business and maintaining social circles were few of my many presented gifts to the mortals. Countering these, however, were the uncountable cons that were thankfully being overshadowed by the positive spell they were already under.

Soon one by one started to fall. As addiction grew at astounding pace, drugs started despising me for all my success in a field that was not even my own. I was winning in all aspects of life in exchange of the mass destruction of mortal sanity but I owned up to it, as if almost with pride, and turned into the villain that I am today. I didn't apologise for who I was then, I wouldn't start apologising for it now. Everything good comes with a price and the humans paid for it with increased cases of anxiety, depression and overall degradation of mental health, all of which I gulped gratefully as my reward.                

As the days grew darker, I started noticing a sudden shift in human behaviour. People started becoming less outgoing — posing as mere counter shadows of their own once social souls. Even the chirpiest of their kind withhold their voices and instead expressed their opinions through their respective accounts in virtual society. Everything to be said and done went through me; full frontal interactions decreased to a bare minimum. The liveliest of souls turned into lifeless prisoners in their respective mortal bodies whilst only living in their made-up virtual worlds.

Now, as much as I enjoyed this all-consuming power, it was no longer fun ruling in a monopoly with no challenges to oversee my wrath. Thus I am here writing to the mere mortals, asking them to snap out of their hypnotised state and from this utter dystopian world they have created for themselves, be it induced to an extent by my power. This is a reminder to start living life outside of their portable rectangular boxes or similar forms of enabling gadgets and start fighting back for the kind of life they were born to achieve; and what great lives those would be if only they'd open their blinded eyes to the real world and just start living.

Veronica Gomes is a socially awkward sophomore. Feel free to trigger awkward encounters by reaching out to her at gomesveronica1997@gmail.com