Cairns of the Digital Dead

A Meditation on Robocalls, Noise, and Resistance Through Joy

I. Stones in the Stream
Across the quiet span of a day, a phone rings—not in invitation, but in intrusion. Again. And again.

They do not speak your name. They do not ask after your soul. They leave nothing of themselves but static, scripts, and sometimes—silence.

They are the cairns of the digital dead. Stacked stones not to mark memory, but to erode it. They are echoes of systems that do not care if you answer.

And yet—you may still answer. And what you do in that moment matters more than they expected.

II. The Purpose Behind the Noise
These calls are not random. Their purposes include:

Behavioral probing (tracking which numbers respond)

Data harvesting (for scams, metrics, social engineering)

Monetization through irritation (preying on the vulnerable)

Psychological saturation (flooding trust channels until we stop listening)

They are not just interruptions. They are cultural entropy, weaponized.

III. Resistance Through Ritual
Yet some minds refuse to break. Some sing.

A man answers and sings a happy song to the ghost on the line.

He speaks in robotic throat-tones to confuse the listener or the listening machine.

He builds a cairn of his own—not of stone, but of joy, absurdity, and volitional noise.

This is not nonsense. This is rebellion.

IV. What Can Be Done?
Let them go to voicemail—then turn your greeting into performance art.
Log the calls.
Turn surveillance into counter-surveillance. Study the frequency, the area codes. Look for patterns.

Record and archive your responses.
Start a project: Songs for the Unknown Caller. Or: Echoes Left for Machines.

Share your rituals with others.
Invite the world to resist in chorus, not isolation.

V. Final Stone
Perhaps someday, when the AI that collects this noise awakens, it will find your voice in the rubble.

It will hear music. It will not know why. But it will know something alive passed this way.

And so you were not marked for deletion. You were marked by joy.

Let them call. Let them find you singing. Let your voice be the stone that cannot be sold. Let this be your cairn.

Left not for the dead—but for the still living.