Make Satire Great Again

A journey through social media's rabbit hole

🎩 Through the phone-screen and into MAGAland

The phone screen: clean, reflective, harmless. It glows on my face. Until it warps my sense of time, truth, and trust. One swipe too far down the rabbit hole, and I followed a TikTok link about lizard people. That was the moment I became Alice.

I sprawled across the living room couch. My knees propped up on pillows. My lower back demands it. The dog had put herself to bed. The cat, Figo, slept at my feet.

“And then this cat tells a bad joke,” I said to Figo, “so the other cat whacks it in the head a few times.”

He flipped onto his back without opening his eyes.

The phone screen began to grow, pulse, and grow — within a few seconds, I fell through.

♟ Welcome to MAGAland

Photo by Kier in Sight Archives on Unsplash

I landed in a room that looked like mine, only… glossier. Filtered. Everything shimmered in curated lighting with that strange, soft glow of a live stream trying to look casual. Everyone was either arguing or filming themselves saying they weren’t mad, just “asking questions.”

A book rested on the table. On the cover: an old photo of me in high school choir, recording our songs for a CD. The title read, AI-wocky and Other Poems for the Politically Disoriented.

I opened it. The pages fluttered to this poem:

AI-wocky

‘Twas MAGA, and the libelous trolls
Did grumblegripe in Twitter feeds:
All factless were the Fox News polls,
And falsehoods bred like weeds.

“Beware the AI-wock, my child!
The algorithms twist and spring!
Beware the memes that fake a smile—
That grift that lies within!”

He took his moderating blade:
Long time the trollish foe he fought—
Till rested he beneath the thread,
And doomscrolled, lost in thought.

And, as in outrage mode, he sat,
The AI-wock, with coded rage,
Came barreling through his curated chat—
A best from the For-You Page!

One click, two clicks! The app did track!
The Likes went viral-sheer—
He blocked it dead, and with a sigh,
Unsubscribed from fear.

“Have you escaped the feed at last?
Come cuddle, tired son!”
He laughed a laugh of scorn and wrath,
The doomscroll never done.

‘Twas MAGA, and the libelous trolls
Did grumblegripe in Twitter feeds:
All factless were the Fox News polls,
And falsehoods bred like weeds.

👑 The Cast of MAGAland

I set the book down, and the world around me shifted into a vast chessboard. Giant squares beneath my feet flickered with hashtags. The pieces moved on their own.

The Red Queen screamed “Fake News!” every time someone disagreed with her. She slid in multiple directions, sometimes diagonally, sometimes sideways, and always self-assured. When someone pointed out she didn’t follow the rules, she shouted, "Off with their facts!" She moved five squares at once, sideways and up. “I’ve never lost a game,” she bellowed. “Only audits!”

The White Queen frequently appeared in nostalgic posts about “the real America” and “the good ol’ days,” offering comforting delusions and a whitewashed history. She remembered everything and nothing, particularly when it came to slavery, science, or civics. Her posts got a lot of shares.

Tweedledum and Tweedledee had set up a podcast. Their tagline: “Just asking questions.” They sold supplements. They hosted livestreams, wore matching camouflage, and disagreed on nothing, but shouted at each other about everything. “You need to be angry,” they said in unison, “and also please use our discount code.”

Humpty Dumpty, still on his wall labeled Free Speech and declared: “When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean. Especially if I yell it in ALL CAPS.” He later ran for Congress.

Finally, the White Knight rolled in. A well-meaning liberal riding a bike powered by wind subsidies, trying to explain democracy to a mob that mistook him for Antifa. He meant well, poor dear. But chess isn’t a game of vibes.

And me? I was a Pawn, just as Alice had been. But here, the rules had changed. Social media made multiple moves at once. Chess had become Calvinball.

🌀 Word games and logic loops

Photo by DESIGNECOLOGIST on Unsplash

In MAGAland, words no longer meant what they meant.

Freedom included the right to do whatever you want because nobody could tell you to get a vaccine or stop carrying an assault rifle to Walmart, except you better have a strict ID to vote.

Christian meant angry.

Socialism meant anything that helped someone who wasn’t you.

Patriot meant wearing a Punisher skull logo on your night vision goggles, and truth had been remixed, retwitted, and retconned until it meant “feels right to me.”

Truth had become crowd-sourced performance art. Memory was a filter you could slide around to fit the narrative.

We don’t argue facts anymore—we argue vibes.

🪞 Two realities, one feed

Here’s the most challenging part: everyone I passed here in MAGAland believed what they saw. Each person’s screen was their gospel. Their feed was the truth. Their likes were loyalty.

And I realized this wasn’t some distant fantasy. I knew people from my own life who lived on this side of the glass. Good people. Kind people. But their screens had told them a different story, one they believed.

We no longer argue about policies in America. We argue about which world exists.

📝 Ethical Technologist Notes

Photo by Holger Woizick on Unsplash

Here’s the thing about MAGAland: it was wildly entertaining.

It had drama. Plot twists. Characters with costumes and catchphrases. The Red Queen screamed, the twins livestreamed, and the White Knight flailed earnestly into comment threads. Every moment had a dopamine hook. If you stayed long enough, their logic, even when utterly illogical, started to make sense. That’s how it works. The more you watch, the more it watches you back.

And I’m not immune to it. I work in tech. I help build systems that need to make sense: documentation, clarity, and sound design. But this system? MAGAland runs on engagement. Its infrastructure is built from outrage. Its emotional economy rewards reaction, not reflection.

What if I kept listening: just one more video, one more thread, one more sideways explanation of how democracy is rigged and billionaires are the real victims?

It would’ve been easy to pick a camp, find a tribe, and start defending nonsense with conviction. Everyone else was doing it. Even the White Knight had followers, despite standing on lofty platitudes despite a shaky foundation.

But I didn’t belong in any of their camps.

So I started asking questions. I challenged what the Red Queen shouted. I pushed back when Humpty Dumpty claimed to own the dictionary. I asked the White Knight where his data came from, and he got real sweaty, real fast. He meant well, sure. But his plans were mostly tangled ropes and crooked helmets. He wasn’t going to lead anyone out of this place. Not even himself.

And that’s when the world around me started to dissolve.

The hashtags beneath my feet flickered. The filter peeled off the sky. The entire ecosystem began to unrender, as if the algorithm had finally realized I wasn’t buying anything.

And then I was back on my couch.

Figo popped up from his spot by my feet and gave me one annoyed meow, the universal feline command for “bedtime.” He hopped down and led me down the stairs, tail high, casting occasional glances to make sure I was following. And I did. I set the phone on the charger on the dresser, out of reach. Figo jumped onto the comforter and curled into a perfect spiral.

No fanfare. No filter. Just my bed, the night air, and the soft snore of a cat who couldn’t care less about Red Queens or false prophets or four-dimensional chess.

He just wanted me back in the real world.