A contemporary gesture haiku

Kiss your own palm 
ecstatically while LOL
and jumping up and down

– Leonard Blumfeld (© 2023)

Notes
Gestural cloning is an essential part of (aspiring to) social media popularity. The above poem is based on one such gesture observed today. Do it, post it on tiktok (or wherever) immediately and get popularity!

For anyone unfamiliar with messaging abbreviations: LOL does not mean “lots of love” but “laughing out loud”. Seems to happen all the time in messages.

For purists: No, I did not quite follow the syllable count and don’t really GAFF.

How I got cheated by a machine

 

A true story from the AI age

On the machine, it said in big writing and with many illustrations, “Print photos from your Instagram.” There were no instructions, so I thought maybe the thing wanted cash first, and threw two 50 cent coins in the slot. It readily showed that now I had a credit of 1 €. No instructions on how to proceed, though.

Eventually, I got tired of waiting for nothing and pressed the red button to at least get my money back. No such luck! 

I looked around for someone who looked like a competent contact person. No such luck, of course. There are no contact persons in the machine age. 

Then I thought I heard some click and turned my attention back to the machine. There was, lo and behold, something in the output slot! I pulled it out and saw, much to my amazement, the two photos shown above. 

I have no idea who these people are. 

It’s like the machine communicated, after all, saying something like “Gotcha! I’ll keep your money – would never dream of giving anything back! – but you get something in return. Now don’t you complain!” 

Lesson learned: Never trust vending machines pretending to be Instagram!

– Leonard Blumfeld (© 2023)

The Instagram pout haiku

Brought to her knees by
her own beauty and that pout
as she shoots herself

– Leonard Blumfeld (© 2018)

Note
View Instagram for zillions of examples.

The feel good quotes haiku

That one by Beckett,
about failing and failing
better more merrier

– Leonard Blumfeld (© 2016)

Note
At least half of social media consists of the cud of feel good quotes chewed over and over again. Here’s a Samuel Beckett failure variant to join the cud and make you feel good, better and merrier about failing.

Selfie, helfie, shelfie, footsie - new words explained and illustrated

While watching the news on Al Jazeera this morning, I learned some new words from a short special they did.

Selfie – a self-portrait shot with a smartphone and shared on a social media site. Apparently invented in Australia in 2002.

(The example shown is actually a double selfie. Looks like I'm about to say something to myself.)


Helfie – a self-portrait showing only the hair or top of the head of the person.

(Low-quality, taken with front camera.)


Shelfie – a self-portrait taken in front of a book shelf.

(Shows my erudite and eclectic taste in books and some knicknacks gathered over the years, just like a proper shelfie should.)


Footsie – well, that's my own little gift to social media. A traditional footsie (foot shot).

Common features of all four are a. shot with a smartphone and b. shared using social media.

Bless the weird world of social media!

All pictures taken with a Sony Ericsson Xperia.