niomi

you are an American peasant in the 1800s.

you lay railroad tracks, or work in mines. your jobs were never glorious or satisfying, but in your youth you longed romantically to do work that is meaningful and not so tedious. now you only yearn for comfort and safety. jobs get harder, you get more injuries, you can't think anymore, your lungs and your joints and your eyeballs are all busted. you know it's taking a toll. more of your co-workers younger and stronger than you are dying, and you know you're kinda lucky, there's been so much death and turnover your new “coworkers” are slaves imported from overseas.

you cannot work as quickly nor as desperately as them. they distribute drugs to deal with the pain and everyone is being super racist about it. you're weighing the risks of racist stigma vs your need to waste yourself more rapidly for bosses and what these drugs can offer to help you do it. despite pushing yourself as hard as you can with all the desperation you do have, it's not enough. instead of trying the drugs, you get nomadic. new geography, slightly different jobs with slightly better conditions, but they always get worse and you must always move on.

your life is on the road now. you are going west.

you realize you are outrunning something, whatever it is, it's evil. it's invisible, but it causes the bosses to turn greedy, your friends to betray one another, the water and air to smell foul, and then brings disease and desperate strangers from far away lands, cramped conditions and death. and, worst of all, declining compensation for your deadly work. strange new currencies attempt to tie you down and prevent you from running to the slightly better jobs, but it hasn't caught you, not yet. you're bartering your way out when you find your currency is no good, but sometime luck will run out, you won't have the right commodity at the right time to get out and a scrip will trap you with that company until it kills you.

this is now an unmistakable pattern. you know now you're outrunning something following you, and you're getting slower. something that drives all bosses to escalate their waste of human capital. something that is also moving west, not far behind.

what could possibly be coming for you that is making it so hard to earn a living, that has pushed you to camping outside, always following the rumor of an opportunity somewhere else? is there some beast, some curse, some plague? what great spirit could so powerfully foul water and air and turn people selfish and sadistic without itself being seen? you start thinking, you've been had, you've been betrayed, your mind reeling- by who? by this wild goose chase of false opportunities? by all these gossipers? someone is taking advantage, but these leads were given to you by patsies, who also got injured and died in the same pursuit. you cannot blame them, you feel lucky to not be them, lucky to still live and keep running. but you must find out, what has caused this? who is to blame?

of course, the newspapers. everywhere you go, they are soon after opening up a newspaper.

Rumors and opportunity were your guiding stars; however, the newspapers, rife with falsehoods, always follow... you've never paid them much heed. Now you're doubting that disinterest. lies in print don't just vanish into thin air— others devour them whole! and before long, you succumb to their belief, yourself. of course, the newspapers, patsies repeat lies and now you believe it too. It's as if the newspapers are poisoning society with their words, a subtle yet pervasive corruption, fleeing it is now your one and only goal in life.

words carry great spirits of death that cannot be seen. your mind races against this current of thought. paper is poison, skepticism is salvation, drunkenness is preferable to opium. resentment surges: why do kids pour over newspapers instead of exercising their own minds? Those broadsheets have brought ruin upon our houses.

unfortunately, it isn't actually the newspaper you're fleeing. A veritable beast, a malevolent name that SHOULD strike fear into the very core of your being, it's George fucking Hearst. capitalism is the monster.

June 2025