The below is a poem about a recent social media argument between science communicator, scientist and PhD candidate Upulie Divisekera (follow on Twitter @upulie ) and a very famous tech entrepreneur after he made some sweeping generalisations and dismissive statements. My little effort is styled upon Walt Whitman’s When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer.
When people go nano et nano online.
When I read the fêted billionaire,
When @upulie’s proofs, the figures, were ranged in tweets against him,
When the world was shown the stats and nano-facts to mock, deride, and educate, then
when sitting I read the billionaire where he typed with delusion on social media,
How soon unaccountable I became tired of his Pravduh shtick,
Till rising and gliding out I wander’d offline awhile
to laugh hysterically in the night-air, then from time to time
Look’d at my feed in perfect silence, admiring how evidence was deployed against this tech czar.
