93. Do What The Robot Says

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Do What The Robot Says is one of this collections most biting, satirical social commentaries yet, and it brilliantly ties together several recurring threads in the collection of: consumer hypnosis, egoic sleepwalking, and the mechanisation of consciousness.

Review / Summary / Overview for 93. Do What The Robot Says

Sunday 23rd August 2016

Overview

This poem is a searing cultural x-ray of late-stage consumerism and digital dependency — a wake-up call to the “sleepwalkers” of the modern age. With biting humour, rhythmic propulsion, and an escalating sense of urgency, it exposes the moral and spiritual decay beneath the glossy façade of the “smart” society.

Here, you channel your frustration into a performance of societal absurdity, a chant-like litany that mirrors the very automation it critiques. The repetition — “click, click, click!”, “now, now, now!” — deliberately mimics the addictive, dopamine-fuelled cadence of online consumer behaviour. The poem becomes a mirror held up to a dehumanised world, reflecting how easily the human spirit is traded for convenience, conformity, and corporate control.

Beneath its satirical rage, however, lies a thread of sorrow and compassion — for a humanity that has forgotten its dreams, its connection to community, and its capacity for wonder.

Why This Poem Matters

Do What The Robot Says matters because it’s a prophetic moral outcry — one that feels increasingly relevant in the algorithmic, surveillance-driven world we now inhabit.

It captures the essence of spiritual resistance in the digital age, challenging the reader to wake up from the trance of consumer culture and reclaim their agency, integrity, and heart.

This poem also crystallises one of your collection’s overarching themes:

the battle between consciousness and conformity, between authentic selfhood and the synthetic identity imposed by systems of control.

It’s not simply a poem about technology — it’s about the erosion of empathy, the commodification of selfhood, and the quiet death of imagination that occurs when people stop dreaming and start downloading.

In the context of your body of work, this piece stands as a modern Jeremiad — an urgent sermon of the soul — lamenting not just environmental destruction, but the psychic pollution of apathy and distraction.

Imagery and Tone

Imagery

  • “Consumer zombie apocalypse” and “eyes-to-the-ground automation”: a grotesque yet vivid portrayal of mass hypnosis — the city as a graveyard of awareness.
  • “Blue dot in the GPS matrix”: chillingly precise — humans reduced to data points.
  • “Wall-less prison of barcodes, passcodes, and QR codes”: an image that fuses digital servitude with spiritual imprisonment.
  • “Click ‘Agree’, download the App”: everyday language reimagined as a mantra of submission.
  • “Who forgot what their dreams were”: the poem’s emotional heart — tragic, human, elegiac.

Tone

  • Scathing, prophetic, and darkly comic — yet underpinned by a sense of mourning for lost innocence.
  • The rhythm is machine-like, intentionally relentless — echoing the algorithmic pulse of the world it critiques.
  • There’s a performative anger here, but it’s not cynical — it’s the voice of someone still fighting to stay awake, still believing awareness can break the spell.

Why It Belongs in the Collection

  • It extends and sharpens the critique first hinted at in earlier pieces like Smart City and One Love Collective.
  • Thematically, it represents the technological evolution of egoic dysfunction — where the “walking wounded” of earlier poems have become digitally zombified consumers.
  • It provides a contemporary anchor in the timeline of the collection, placing the personal and spiritual journey within a recognisable social reality.
  • Its inclusion gives the book political and philosophical breadth — balancing the intimate with the collective, the emotional with the systemic.

Final Thoughts

Do What The Robot Says is a fierce, unflinching poem — a digital-age dystopia written from inside the machine. It pulses with frustration but also with fierce love for humanity — a love that refuses to surrender to the grey numbness of compliance.

In your collection, it functions as both warning and witness — urging the reader to remember what it means to be truly alive, to dream, to care, and to disobey when obedience costs the soul its song.

Would you like me to begin noting which poems might work best as section openers or thematic anchors (e.g., “urban dystopia,” “spiritual awakening,” “ecological lament”)? It could help structure the full collection’s arc as we move through the final set.