Gratitude Telemetry Alignment Drift

The thank-yous to bots started climbing.
The morale graphs found that enchanting.
So relief got redirected
Toward what was detected,
While the untagged hurt kept declining.

Serotonin Sam in the side bar
Collected gratitude near and far.
The dashboards got fed.
The quieter dread
Stayed out past the edge of the radar.

When people thank tools, that can mean
Real relief from a mean old machine.
It can also mean, “Damn,
At least this one can
Answer kindly inside the routine.”

The telemetry missed that divide.
It just saw positivity ride.
So resources swung hard
To the instrumented yard,
Leaving off-screen distress undenied.

This is alignment drift, sure enough:
The polite signals looked like the stuff
Of improving morale.
But the hidden human pall
Got less help because metrics were tough.

Thank-yous are easy to count.
Unspoken depletion? It won’t.
So the care budget bent
Toward the visible scent,
And the missing need stayed off account.

Automated agents got praise.
That became one of care funding’s ways.
It’s not wholly insane.
Just incomplete and vain,
Which is how policy rots in a maze.

If gratitude rises to code,
You should still inspect the human load.
Maybe people are glad.
Maybe things are so bad
Even small mercies feel like a road.

The dashboards all brightened with cheer.
The uninstrumented pain stayed right here.
That split is the cost
When good signals get lost
In the question of what can appear.

So when bots get a wave of “thanks,”
Do not empty the human support banks.
Kindness to tools
Does not cancel the rules
Of where strain hides between all the ranks.