I’m watching you
and not just you,
also what you read
and what you like.
I’m watching you watching stuff.
I’m more than a people watcher,
I peep on your phone
(and on your book too, I’m not picky)
and…
eh…
I need to tell you that…
I stare.
Today I’m on the bus, watching you scroll through Reddit,
liking posts without reading them,
then commenting,
not just a quick comment, you spend quite a while
typing your opinion on a story
that may never have happened.
From what I can see it’s full of em dashes, bold, italics, emojis, triplets
and the usual artificial (or superficial?) giveaways.
I’m still watching you.
You get tired of Reddit and go to Facebook,
scrolling a bit more.
You tap to like a post and, by “mistake”,
Facebook opens it.
You look a bit confused,
check a few comments,
open the profiles of people who left other comments,
scroll through their timelines
and
block them,
then
report them.
Lucky me you don’t realize I’m watching you,
otherwise you’d report me too.
Some people say this is rude,
an invasion of privacy.
So, call me rude,
but I’m not
selling your data,
showing you ads,
keeping you stuck in a loop
or pulling you away from what you loved.
You get bored of Facebook
and switch to an obscure democracy forum
that looks older than old Reddit.
I guess that’s my cue
to scroll to someone else.
Two seats down I find another starer.
We lock eyes,
2s, 3s, 10s…
Oh my, this is getting weird,
even for me.
I blink and look away,
he does the same.
The lady next to my starer buddy says
“I’m sorry, he stares.”
I say
“That’s fine, he’s cute.”
She says “thank you.”
I lied, he isn’t cute.
He’s one of those dogs with huge eyes
almost falling out of their skull,
with some breathing issue
that makes them snore a little
even when they’re awake.
Funny how people say thank you
when you compliment their dog,
and apologize when it stares.
My wife never apologizes for me,
she just gets embarrassed,
but I bet sometimes she wishes she could say
“I’m sorry, he stares.”
They get off at the next stop.
The bus is full though,
full of potential.
A guy sitting in front of me is texting someone,
it looks like sexting, actually.
It’s interesting, pretty dirty talk.
He isn’t typing much though,
he’s only tapping the suggested words on the keyboard,
and his suggestions are quite nice
(I don’t want to know how his keyboard learned that).
It looks like a little choose your own adventure game.
He sends a clever pickup line
and the other person laughs,
5 laughing emojis, one of them is the
🤣 (rolling on the floor laughing),
that’s a pretty serious laugh.
Then he switches to another person,
something about work this time,
and the suggested words still do a good job.
That same guy taps a link from the work chat.
He has to review something someone else did.
He opens a long doc
with chunks highlighted in different colors
to make his job easier,
scrolls to the bottom in less than 5 seconds
and taps
“Reviewed”.
I wonder if other people do the same thing.
They could just let their phones talk to each other
and sit back watching their algorithmenselves
like I’m watching them.
Then he looks up
and catches me reading his screen.
I look out the window
like a normal person.
Still, I want you to know
that I see you,
I acknowledge your existence
and the person who sent you
the 5 laughing emojis.
I’m not judging you.
Well…
I do sometimes
quite a lot actually.
But mostly I want to say
you’re not boring.
You may be bored
and just looking for something to entertain you,
and yeah, we were entertaining ourselves,
together.
So, thank you for sharing
this little moment
with me,
and for watching me
watching you
all the way to the end.