Monster Video (MV)

Picture a sick man in New York in the seventies
Deinstitutionalized now he's on the street
But unlike Lou Reed he has a foul proclivity
Of making death threats to everyone he sees

Call every death threat one pound of misery
That the whole world now has to carry
His problem is that he's constrained by technology
On the number of death threats he can make daily

People on the street might number eighty or ninety
He can only scrawl out a few letters daily
So while this sick man brings the world misery
He cannot shift the balance completely

We've created a monster
It's swallowing the Earth

Now picture this man in twenty nineteen
With a laptop, a browser, and a fast ISP
His quota of death threats now nears infinity
And every one another pound of misery

Millions of people can be hurt effortlessly
By just this one man, unchanged from the seventies
Let's not forget that he can now meet
Other sad sacks who think just like he

In the old days he'd never happen to see
Another like him, he had to act singly
Now he can team up, kibbutz, and compete
Working together they increase efficiency

We've created a monster
It's swallowing the Earth

"Ah but" you say to me gently and sagely
"There an opposite accounting of this tragedy
One of joy brought by others more saintly
They too are now empowered and set free
The internet brings us more of everything
Good and the bad but it balances eventually"

But one pound of joy and one of misery
Are not balanced to zero when experienced equally
So taught us Kahneman and Amos Tversky
Infinite joy doesn't negate equal agony
Fear isn't hot water that can be cooled with Icees
It's a poison take enough it'll kill us eventually

We've created a monster
It's swallowing the earth
I helped create a monster
I was at the birth

We've created a monster
We've created a monster
It's swallowing the earth