Yesterday, 03:38 PM
For a bit of context (although it could be argued that if you need to provide context to a work of art it is not working anyway), this poem was written in response to the alarming recent craze here in Ireland of groups of young men driving stolen cars the wrong way down the hard shoulder of the motorway, apparently for clout on TikTok, which has led to a number of terrible accidents and deaths. This, of course, has engendered considerable online comment on the state of the feral youth of Ireland, much of it classist and racist, and it is a terrifying trend, as if we didn’t have enough to worry about already. However, I do have a certain sympathy for a generation’s (obviously I have considerably more for anyone they have crashed into) nihilistic response to a society that is telling them that AI is making them unemployable, they will never own anything, their present is unaffordable, and the world's going to end soon enough anyway, although of course, this craze is more likely about young people’s ability to do incredibly stupid things because they are unable to compute the consequences of their actions than any of the above.
I have edited the original to move from the first person to the position of a more narrative observer, which I think works a lot better in this context, and removed the last verse as it was garbage.
I have edited the original to move from the first person to the position of a more narrative observer, which I think works a lot better in this context, and removed the last verse as it was garbage.