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Portrait of a Cyborg

By Eugene Lim

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Wake up, look at phone. Any likes? Mentally compose tweet. Smaller or bigger slices of time — fifteen minutes, an hour, two — lost to scrolling through the tweets of strangers. Grow depressed. Leave home for work; return for forgotten phone. Incessant re-figuring of one’s thoughts and life events into a status update, tweet. On commute, decide to listen to podcast, become paralyzed by choices, end up choosing trashiest podcast. Get bored. Play game on phone. Try to read saved longform article, fail. Play game on phone. Look at photostream. Get to work, confront laggy desktop due to thirty open tabs. Go through tabs and close half. Compose and post status update. Regret posting. Grow depressed. Any likes? Email easiest emails; procrastinate on harder emails. Read political article. Grow depressed. Troubleshoot why wireless headphones can’t connect to phone. Read forums. Download new app. Realize phone is short on memory. Delete apps. Delete photos. Delete videos. Configure new app. Download new app. Configure new app. Grow depressed. Read political article. Grow depressed. Email one hard email. Reward self by researching new wireless headphones. Open fifteen more tabs. Any likes? Go home. Order dinner and begin to drink heavily. Watch seven music videos of bygone European pop musician mentioned in translated interview with Brazilian novelist gone to from Wikipedia page of reality web series launched by trashy podcaster. Watch porn. Watch two more music videos. Go to sleep. Dream of switching through an infinite number of browser tabs. Dream: Any likes?

 

 

Eugene Lim’s most recent novel Dear Cyborgs is published by FSG Originals and available here.

 

Visit Eugene Lim’s website here or follow him on Twitter here.

 

 

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