Lottery Ticket

People want to be praised for mediocrity, hugged for being slow

You don’t need to agree, but at least pretend to not be allergic to growth

And coddled through failure, real crime is lying to your damn self every day

And calling it optimism, or wasting every second of potential that you say

You have, or pretending your laziness is some misunderstood genius phase

That’s the felony, that’s the theft of a life you’ll never get back any day

Criticism used to mean dialogue, now it’s a social media thread

Filled with basement-dwellers screaming shallow metaphors

Quotes from people who’ve never read a book longer than a tweet, of course

Real critique demands work, most people aren’t ready for that

They want validation, not evaluation, and power can also be subtle, that’s a fact

Sometimes it's a central bank deciding inflation targets

Without one damn vote cast by the people they affect, it’s retarded

Crime is the abuse of power, and the rejection of criticism

All crimes against your own potential, and the punishment is

A life of delusion, you've got Stanford engineers building the same apps

They now write about escaping from, digital detox is what they refer to it as

Criticism is only welcome if it maintains the illusion of open discourse

While reinforcing the same stale power structures that got us here before

You talk about crime while robbing others of time, peace, and patience

Just by being around them, you want to fight injustice

Start with the shitstorm in your own mirror, power is magnetic, isn’t it

Like the promise of control can somehow fix the chaos inside of it

Target and IKEA make money from your pain, retail therapy’s just legalized

Bribery to keep you compliant, the fight for meaning is a pit fight

A kid selling weed gets ten years in Rikers, isolation is the modern philosopher

In exile, authors scribbling about the banality of evil while you sit comfortably in your

Suburb, watching atrocities through the cushion of detachment

The meltdown is Oscar-worthy when they lose their power, cause it was never about

The responsibility, it was the performance, the image that they found

The illusion that others actually feared them, strip away their titles, their badges

And all you're left with is a fragile ego in search of a leash to grab on

Isolation creeps in not as a choice, but as a consequence of stupidity

Of being so emotionally unavailable you might as well be a vending machine

With no snacks, they call it peace, but you know what it is

It’s everyone else finally giving up on trying to make a connection

It’s the result of burning bridges and expecting people to start swimmin’

But keep romanticizing that cold, silent apartment as a temple

Of enlightenment, isolation is the reward for a life spent pushing everyone away

And then acting surprised when no one shows up, no matter how long you wait

Criticism when done right can build empires, but most of y’all

Treat it like a mugging, like honesty came at them with a chainsaw

Because it hurts, doesn't it, not the words, but the realization of the fact

That people see through your crap, that nobody wants to clap

So maybe, just maybe, you're not all that, and yet, criticism is a gift

You reject like a spoiled brat at Christmas, you’ll collect fake compliments

Like Funko Pops, stack them up to feel big, and then cry and sob

When the whole shelf collapses, you don’t need another ego massage

You need a damn intervention and a sledgehammer to the pedestal

You built from participation trophies, crime is about betrayal

Not just laws, it’s in the moments you know better but choose worse

In the lies you tell to make yourself look noble while you murk

Other people’s reality, every time you manipulate, dodge accountability

Or twist words to win an argument, you're a criminal

Just not the fun kind, and society rewards this shit, the worst offenders

Get book deals, the scum that rises to the top gets labeled as ambitious

Or strategic, so crime pays, just not in ways your broke ass will ever cash in on