They turn on their laptop, login, and pull up a Generic social media site. The little icon does a little dance animation while it process the login information. The little icon stops for a second and the screen changes; they’re in. Scrolling through the communities they joined, they do a quick review of catching up on the latest comings and goings of what new or ongoing tragedies in the world. They stop and click on a post; it’s a video and when they hover their mouse over it the still of the video changes from the burnt and burned bodies of two little children. The caption reads; Name of Country Citizens after Describe Horrific Event in some detail. They can see the leg bone of one of the children poking through a strip of flesh. They’ve become desensitized to this kind of stuff already. And they’re already in their early twenties.
It reminds them of a comment their older sibling made in retaliation and attempted defiance to something their mother said; they can’t remember what it is exactly their mother said. But their older sibling responded with something along the lines of “Watching a person get their head hacked off with a machete on live television.” Or was it simply a video? They can’t remember. This also reminds them of the countless, every year in fact, times they had to write a little report on a tragedy that devastated the Nation they were Born In. It was unexpected and unthinkable at the time. Conspiracy theories say it was an inside job; there’s ample evidence and proof to say it was an inside job, but they don’t know what to believe anymore. Was it truly an inside job and the conspiracy theories got simply swept up in other conspiracy theories, such as reptilian overlords and People of A Certain Faith controlling all of the world’s banks? Or was the truth plain and simple; it was an inside job. They didn’t know what to believe anymore.
The colored video on the social media-like platform reminds them, again, of A Certain Word that Means to Eradicate a Certain Group of People, where the class in which they saw these pictures, black and white pictures that is, of emaciated human bodies and corpses. (There were also black and white photographs of events that led up to this atrocity too.) Oh how times have changed in the blink of an eye; when compared to human verses Earth history that is. But these atrocities, when the Eradication official started and started to snowball exponentially, happened only (here they searched in another tab how long ago it happened. They clicked the “search” feature. An article is the first search result. The number seventy seven is in bold.) seventy seven years ago. Long ago enough for their grandparents to still be alive, give or take a few years or so.
This thought then reminded them of the Three Hundred Year Long Struggle, Really More Than That Still, of a certain race of people sold and/or captured and shipped off to New Worlds across a vast ocean. This event was much worse than they were told, as they learned through A Certain Media Type Platform where they Pin their Interests on the Boards they Created. But who can say the little atrocities, the little civil wars, peppered in-between this Three Hundred Year Long Struggle were verified by the descendants of these same people?
Back to the colored video.
As the video plays out, the mute button is on as they’re in public (somewhere) and don’t want to disturb any passersby, it starts from the beginning. It shows the adults of these People carrying and running towards safety. There’s a Burned Child in ragged clothing in their arms. Another shot an adult of these People running for safety again, but the child in their arms is smaller, and the adult is crying. The shot changes to show the carnage of the Most Recent Attack on these People. It cuts to a non blurred/censored close up shot of a pinkish-red fetus. A hand off screen, an Adult hand wearing gloves, moves some of the concrete rubble. They don’t know what to feel. They don’t know what they are feeling. Of course they are shocked by the bare gruesomeness of this Heinous Atrocity, it isn’t gory in terms of blood or internal organs, no. It’s gory in terms they are so desensitized to this Atrocity, it reminds them of the Pictures they saw on that Certain Media Type Platform where they saw a pinned picture on their “Catered to Them (You)” page where there was a picture of a crying man, he’s a father. His face is screwed up in the kind of pain that only shows when a parents loses a child. He’s covered in dirt. He’s wearing ragged clothing. He is lifting up their child underneath their armpits. The child’s head is blown off by something. (Does it matter what Type of Deadly Advanced Weapon they’re using these days?) They can see the headless child’s spinal cord sticking out from where their neck should be. A strip of flesh coils around the back of the child’s vertebrae.
The video keeps going. The gloved Adult hand has removed what little rubble covers the pinkish-red fetus. Its umbilical cord is still attached. The end of it where it connects to its nonexistent mother curls at the end. The fetus wobbles as the gloved Adult hand picks it up, turns it over in their hands. The video cuts to a shot of a woman Wearing a Scarf with a black and white pattern around her head, covering her hair and shoulders. She’s crying, they think. It’s hard to tell since the video is on mute. The video cuts to the still “advertised” by the original post. It shows the same thing as before; but this time they witness an adult wrapping a dirty strip of cloth around the Child’s other leg that doesn’t have their leg bone sticking out of it. There is another child lying right next to them. They don’t think about whether or not the second child is alive.
Their stomach dropped a little when the video showed them the fetus. But they moved on, not feeling numb or even numb to begin with, but rather a third, hidden, feeling after dread and numbness. Desensitized.
They hit the back button and make a quick scroll of their Tailored News/Social Media Feed. They see posts from the communities they are a part of. They mindlessly scroll past them, not even taking it all in before moving onto the next one. They close the tab and move on with their day. They’ve a job to do.
