The Internet is broken,
The Freedom Train has stalled.
The Netizens are woken,
The gardens all are walled.
If anyone’s outspoken,
They soon will be recalled.
The Internet is broken
and I’m sitting here, appalled.
The Internet is busted;
its people are at war.
The principles I trusted
I don’t trust any more.
Our minds are maladjusted,
but we cannot restore
the Internet we busted
to the one we had before.
This song actually has a cheerful melody, but since I can’t write musical notation you’ll just have to trust me on that, until I attempt to record it.
When I first started out on the web in the late 90s early 2000s there was an ideal that the web would be a post-prejudicial medium. Behind a screen-name could be anyone, of any age, of any race, or gender/sex. It didn’t matter who you were, you could participate and form an identity for yourself as you pleased. There was an idea that the web would be completely free from prejudice. Now, the anonymous communities are seen as cesspools of hatred and everything vile. We make out this ideal vision in which people would start to meet in person again. As if prejudice comes from not seeing, rather than seeing. I cannot help but still believe in the old notion, but I do not know how we can ever return to something that was hardly ever more than a dream in the first place.
I actually read your lyrics to the tune of “Brothers Under the Sun” by Bryan Adams ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qnlFTF56P0k ); and I found it to be strangely fitting, but the feel is very far from cheerful.
P.S. For the social network’s Too-Long-Don’t-Read-but-Comment-Anyway mentality today, I don’t have any word to contribute other than: *sigh*