Changing Madness/Changing Sanity

In the 1970s it was considered humour
when one person overheard another
muttering to themselves
when they thought nobody was there
and the other person said
'Talking to yourself is the first sign of madness',
assuming that the other person was listening.

Fast forward fifty years
and Google and Alexa are here now, 
less to overhear us 
(though some are unsure about that)
more to make our madness 
more consistent than we can make it
without their help.

Six Degrees

One recent idea about how people live
is called 'six degrees of separation'.
The idea became the basis for a play
and then it became a film,
before entering into the woozy mess
of mass public forgetfulness.

Less celebrated is it's older cousin,
who is so old nobody knows how old it is.
It is called 'Six degrees of denial'
and the hostility it hides lurks
in logarithms of our smartphones.