The Signal Fades
Rive's debut chapbook. A brutalist deconstruction of user experience design principles applied to romantic relationships.
Out of PrintIntroduction to the Work
I have spent years removing myself from the visible layers of the internet. Interviews, profiles, archives, and old projects have all been taken down. I prefer to write without the interference of biography, search results, or the strange clarity that algorithms try to impose on a person. This site is the one place I allow my work to surface. What appears here is simply what I choose to release in the moment. It may change once in a day or stay still for a while. A piece you see now may return without warning, or you may never see it again. Nothing on this page follows a schedule. It reflects only the passing shape of my thoughts.
My work is rooted in a radical critique of persuasive technology and the insidious ways it shapes human decision making. I come from a background in behavioral science, and I have always viewed poetry as a form of defensive literacy. It slows the reflexes that digital environments try to accelerate. It allows me to examine the small, unnoticed influences that guide attention and behavior long before awareness catches up.
What appears below may be a placeholder taken from a piece I return to often, or it may be a more recent realization that arrived without warning. I let the text settle into this space until the next musing insists on being seen. Some writings stay briefly. Others return after long absences. I do not decide these patterns in advance.
I often shape my work so that the structure carries as much meaning as the language itself. Patterns can say as much as sentences when they are allowed to speak quietly. I encourage you to read not only the words but the way they are arranged. The form always reveals something about the mind that created it, and at times it reflects the inspiration I sense from readers I have never met.
My Most Returned-To Work: The Place Your Mind Arrived Before You Did
I burn receipts in morning light,
Watch numbers curl and fade to white.
Cities hum with wires and screens,
Still I dream in older greens.
Can connection live in glass?
I find it in wind-bent grass.
My hands know dirt, my feet know stone,
The algorithm leaves me alone.
I walk where satellites can’t see,
Where the only code is bird and tree.
You can have your glowing chains,
Thoughts revealed but unexplained.
From the collection Static Harmonies
A Chronicle of Nudges
Rive's work argues that modern interfaces are designed to bypass conscious reasoning, trapping users in an endless loop of pre-selected consumption and emotion. Her principles are set out in the Manifesto, and her published collections are listed in the Bibliography.