The bastards did it. They’ve wired the planet together like a cheap carnival ride powered by the dopamine glands of a billion apes who can’t stop scrolling long enough to blink.
Billions of us jammed into a digital feeding trough, spewing likes and hashtags while the machine priests in hoodies sit in their glass towers, grinning as the engagement charts climb and the cash registers hum.
On the inside, it’s glorious. Algorithms tuned tighter than a Vegas blackjack dealer. Moderation pipelines running like NASA control rooms. Ads targeted with surgical precision. ISO auditors would swoon. Capability off the charts.
But outside? It’s carnage. Communities gutted, trust butchered, politics poisoned. Tribal warfare on tap, misinformation by the gallon. The maturity mirage in full bloom: doing the wrong things brilliantly well.
And the worst part? The lie. The great carnival trick. Who’s the customer here? Not you. Not the so-called “user.” You’re the bait. You’re the meat on the hook. The real customer is the advertiser, and you’re just the product dressed up to look like one.
This is the savage joke of our age: flawless machines running at scale, pointed in the wrong direction, grinding social capital into dust while we grin and tap and scroll like happy lab rats.
The machine works perfectly. The problem is what it’s pointed at.