Again, and I apologize, I come back to social media.
Ever notice how you don’t notice when someone has taken a break from social media?
Really, the only time you ever notice if someone has taken a break from the hamster wheel of social media is when they return to social media and tell you about their break.
Then you’re like, “Oh, I didn’t notice you were gone. Well, welcome back, buddy!”
That gets to the point of how insidious the whole machine is: We need to then broadcast on the very platform we’ve abstained from the fact that we left in the first place for the bump of dopamine and validation. But we’re back … on the platform … to tell you how great it was to be away from the platform.
There are no gaps in your feed. Imagine if you saw a gap in your “programming.” A channel that appears on or off. But no, there are no gaps. It gets filled in with whatever the bots have detected you need at that moment. Not because you liked so-and-so’s riff, but because something in your browser history, or a link you clicked, or something else told the AI that at this time, we’re gonna shovel this coal into your furnace.
And I don’t need to tell you: coal doesn’t burn clean.
