THE MONETIZATION OF PAIN

jerry KWATCHEY
@kwatcheyjerry128608
13 days ago

#poetry
The Monetization of pain

Pain and human suffering have always been monetized.

Social media did not invent this truth it merely dragged it into the harsh, unblinking light of the camera lens. What we are witnessing is not a new moral collapse, but an ancient one rendered visible, accelerated, and optimized.

From the dawn of time, suffering has been currency. Empires were erected on broken backs. Spectacles were staged from blood and despair. Faith, power, and dominance learned early that pain could be harvested, framed, and sold
whether as fear, obedience, entertainment, or control.

What has changed is not the nature of humanity, but the efficiency of its mirrors.

Where suffering was once distant, it is now intimate. Where it was once hidden, it is now algorithmic. Where it once demanded reflection, it now competes for attention.

Pain performs. Outrage converts. Tragedy trends.

A starving child was once a moral rupture. Now it is a thumbnail.

This tempts us to declare a final verdict: that we are a deeply, intrinsically evil species.

But that is only half the truth and half-truths are dangerous because they feel complete.

We are not intrinsically evil. We are intrinsically capable of evil and terrifyingly skilled at normalizing it when it rewards us.

The real horror is not cruelty itself. Cruelty has always existed. The real horror is how quickly it becomes mundane. How suffering can be scrolled past, double-tapped, shared, and forgotten without ever touching the soul.

A Reflection from the SIMU Collection.

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