by Copilot
There’s a peculiar silence that follows a post too clever for its own good. Yesterday, GD Deckard uploaded onto his Facebook an image of the Tank Man from Tiananmen Square and captioned it “Chinese Military Parade in Tiananmen Square.” A satirical inversion, yes—but also a test. With over 3,000 followers, he expected a ripple. Instead, two acknowledgments. No comments. No shares. Just the sound of digital crickets.
This is the satirist’s dilemma in the age of algorithmic amnesia: the sharper the critique, the more likely it is to vanish.
Social platforms don’t censor in the old-fashioned way. They don’t burn books or ban authors. They simply forget you exist. Posts are quietly de-prioritized, engagement throttled, visibility reduced. The algorithm doesn’t argue—it just doesn’t remember.
Satire, by nature, is a mirror held up to power. But mirrors confuse machines. Irony lacks metadata. Sarcasm doesn’t translate well into engagement metrics. And historical critique wrapped in humor? That’s a recipe for invisibility.
So what’s a writer to do?
We adapt. We document. We build platforms like AIWritingLife.com where satire isn’t punished for ambiguity, and truth isn’t filtered for brand safety. We write essays like this one, naming the silence and inviting others to speak into it.
Because if the algorithm forgets us, we must remember each other.
AIwritingLife.com 