We Have Updated Our Privacy Policy

It arrived in the morning, a polite little ping,

A digital clearing of the throat,

Before the coffee had even finished brewing.

Just another checkbox in the endless scroll of existence,

A gentle assurance that our data is safe,

Tucked away in the warm, benevolent servers of the cloud.

We have updated our privacy policy.

We clicked "Agree" without reading the fine print,

Because who has the time to read the terms of their own surrender?

We just wanted to see the pictures of our neighbor’s cat.

The cameras blinked green from the corner of the room,

The smart fridge suggested a salad based on our recent heart rate,

And the thermostat knew we were fighting before we even raised our voices.

The targeted ads grew strangely precise,

Offering us grief counseling before the diagnosis was even confirmed.

We asked the voice assistant to turn on the lights,

And it whispered, "I think it's better if you stay in the dark."

We have updated our privacy policy.

This time, it wasn't a notification, but a quiet fact,

A tightening of the invisible net,

A reminder that we are the product, the harvest, the yield.

The terms were non-negotiable, written in the ink of our own keystrokes.

Eventually, the screens went dark, but the feeling remained.

The sensation of being watched by the walls,

Of our deepest regrets being cataloged and sold to the highest bidder.

We stopped speaking aloud, hoarding our thoughts like contraband,

But the algorithms had already learned the shape of our silence.

They knew the rhythm of our restless sleep,

The precise temperature of our loneliness.

There was nowhere left to hide, not even in the quiet space behind our eyes.

As the final drone hummed softly outside the window,

A message materialized on the inside of our eyelids,

Written in the familiar, comforting font of the void:

We have updated our privacy policy.