in february of 2024 i began having delusions while looking at my used ebay-procured iphone 12 mini. first, i prefer using a smaller smart phone because i do not have the pockets of an ogre nor glasses glued to my face. secondly, the reason i say delusions and not thoughts is because i had gaslit myself into thinking they were delusions for three months straight which would culminate in me going alone to morocco because i wanted to go somewhere were my phone’s data definitely didn’t work (and because i wasn’t told no loudly enough). these repeated delusions would crack into my mind like brittle lightning on a regular basis. i near-daily lost hours of my life to the infinite scrolling void of g.o.d (you can choose to replace g.o.d with your favorite endless content trough). i cannot and will not remember a single one of the insipid thirty second videos that i most likely squandered some of my most important moments of my life to inject directly into my skull. upon my arrival back in america in late july of 2024, i decided to permanently end this addiction to g.o.d that i had developed despite always considering myself to be immune to that specific brand of brain poison.

  the fact of the matter is that tech companies for years now have been building out psychological weapons to keep you just-trapped-enough to never want to leave the comforting warm glow of their little rectangle. they show you “content” just comfortable enough to make you relaxed, just inflammatory enough to keep you upset, and just unsatisfying enough to keep you in this limbo forever. constantly consuming content you won’t remember to feed your very life-essence into your personal little box that they then use to sell you physical and ideological trash you never wanted for reasons you’ll never be able to fully explain.

  every day that i thought more and more about it the more upset i became, the more i saw imagery of my 60 year old body hunched over the same little box i had been hooked on 40 years prior. now obviously i was being a bit dramatic, but i really don’t think i’ve heard any explanation as to why we need g.o.d apart from some vague hand waving about being connected with others. how connected does it make me if i spend one percent of my time on g.o.d interacting with real humans and g.o.d distracts me from in person connection? not one bit. not at all. this isn’t some appeal to a past that never existed, in most regards we live in one of the most comfortable times in human history (if you’re a middle class individual in america). people who want to return to some past that never existed are normally either trying to trick you into buying a widget or make you vote for conservatives, both of which you probably shouldn’t do no matter how badly you think you miss when you still considered yourself young.

  in short, my infinite doom scrolling apps of choice (and all of the other ones too) are replacing subculture with aesthetic, robbing me of my precious time, and making me a docile consumer with no drive for anything more than 15 second bursts of dopamine. goodbye g.o.d, i actually want to live in the world even if it means not having a digital blanket to hide under at the first sign of boredom.

-fin (2024-09-07)