“In multitasking computer operating systems, a daemon is a computer program that runs as a background process, rather than being under the direct control of an interactive user.”
—Wikipedia
🧟: You probably met at a party. Or at school. Maybe even at work. That, or your mutual connection(s) or some other unifying factor(s) will likely pull you back into each other’s orbit at some point, during which a superficial conversation about your respective lives will transpire as a ritual of decorum. As such, you zombie scroll past their intermittent acts (i.e. posts, tweets, whatever) with passive indifference, neither resenting them nor caring for the details of their life—unless, of course, the publicized details in question either (a) implicate your mutual connection(s)/unifying factor(s); or (b) intersect with your personal outlooks and agendas. You, like everybody else, unwittingly, apathetically, constitute the silent majority of other people’s audiences, none of whom you have found it necessary or convenient to un-fan, un-follow, un-friend (yet).
🕵: Maybe you’re a witch. Or a corporate agent. A card-carrying member of the press? Better yet: A registered Republican. No, a radical progressive! But wait. You’re too…what’s the word? Unique. What about “an-intersectional-hybrid-of-discrete-identities-that-may-not-even-be-compatible?” Did we get that right? Well, your costumes may change, depending on the circumstances, but a suit is a suit, and the objectives are clear: absorb, control, or destroy. You scrutinize every little thing your targets share about themselves with hand-me-down rubrics authored by the governors of your associations. Always so critical (“and rightfully so,” you tell yourself). Who else—who better—to perform the important work of surveilling the others? Everybody better watch their step, because you won’t be un-fanning, un-following, or un-friending anyone anytime soon. After all, somebody needs to be keeping tabs.
👻: You might have been/could have/would have been lovers. Soulmates. Your minds, or your bodies, or whatever, reached euphoric heights together that can’t so easily be forgotten (or, at the very least, be un-remembered). Then again, chances are just as well that you’re enemies, and that an undying inner compass will, on occasion, turn the needle in their direction, spurred by the kind of curiosity that’s only satisfied by the deepening of a grudge or a dose of schadenfreude (whichever comes first). Lovers. Enemies. Whatever the case, these distinctions don’t really apply in this limbo you’ve found yourself in. You are, in every manner of the description, a ghost: helplessly bound yet virtually incapable of making contact. So you haunt their digital footprint with your swirl of muted feelings: watching, waiting, willing something, anything to happen. God forbid they turn their accounts private (or deactivate them altogether).
🧛♀️: Coming soon!
🧙♂️: Coming soon!
Last updated: July 05, 2022