It looks permanent.
It isn’t.
The land belongs to someone else.
Google owns the ground.
Facebook owns the streets.
Amazon owns the warehouses underneath.
We build anyway. Profiles. Pages. Feeds.
Careers made of posts.
Memories stored in timelines.
We call them ours.
They aren’t.
Your Facebook page is a shack.
Your Twitter account is a tent.
Thin walls. Temporary locks.
The paint changes overnight.
The door works until it doesn’t.
Sometimes you come home and someone is already inside, scrolling.
That’s normal here.
The only thing you actually produce is data.
And to stay on the land, you give up control of it.
Your work creates value.
You don’t own where it settles.
This isn’t ownership.
It’s permission.
You are either a squatter or a renter.
There is no third option.
You think about leaving.
Good luck.
Your friends live here.
Your family’s memories live here.
Your history is cached here.
Delete your account and you fade.
Out of sight.
Out of mind.
So you stay.
This is how slums work.
The solution isn’t better huts.
It’s land titles.
When people own the ground under their feet, everything changes.
They invest.
They plan.
They pass something on.
This worked in Indonesia.
In Ecuador.
In Vietnam.
In India.
Slums became economies because ownership replaced permission.
Right now, the internet isn’t a city.
It’s a shanty town with good branding.