Scalps on a belt

They call it networking, but it’s barter. Nothing more than men and women trading pretentiousness like cattle, weighing each other’s hides for profit. I am not bored by it—I am disgusted.

Disgust sits heavier in my stomach than hunger.

And you find them everywhere, suits parading their contacts like scalps on a belt. There is no loyalty in it. You could be pulling your knife to defend them while they’d already be pulling the trigger at your back. They mimic human behavior: the nods, the handshakes, the questions asked. But there’s no pulse in it. No kinship. No trust. Just performance for personal gain.

What’s left, when every word spoken is shackled to purpose? When true interest dies the second it fails to feed a man’s ambition? Pantomime, a mirror polished so bright you can’t see the emptiness it reflects. A theater of the false-hearted. Nothing but calculation. This has never built a bond between souls — it only teaches people to use others like tools. In this age, tools that don’t serve get tossed aside.

And I wonder if it’s me. Is this disgust of mine real—or am I just weary from a job that drags me, time and time again, into that circus of hollow faces? Or is it bile from being born too late, wishing for a world where a handshake meant something, where a man’s word was his spine, and consequence were felt instead of delivered in a string of zeroes and ones?

It feels like sitting in a cheap casino. Everyone’s tossing chips, none of them covered.

What’s rotting here isn’t time—it’s people.