Just because we're not eating human flesh doesn't mean we're not zombies: Part 2

"Where does personality end and brain damage begin?"

-Douglas Coupland

"Phone Addiction" by Zephyo is licensed under CC BY NC 3.0

At least once a day, every day, billions of people on social media post something hilarious. Or slightly witty. The level of hilariousness is determined by likes, reactions. We repost something funny, and now we are funny. If our post isn't funny, it is the 17th selfie take of abs or fish-face. It's a big serving of angry ranting with a side of "who's with me?" It is emptiness, personified. What is happening every second on any social media network is a circle jerk of epic proportions, a merry-go-round of memes and platitudes. Get AI involved, and then we're just meat-bags, robots in a factory. The hamster wheel of life in these times is a shape shifter; it doesn't want us to see that we are going nowhere. The further we detach from reality, the worse it gets. We know things are missing, beneath the farce, behind the mask. In between these choreographed moments, bits and ones and zeroes, we feel a deep ache in the pit of our gut, and we know, undoubtedly that something is very, very wrong. But then, we are back to it.

TikTok flashes microvids like Vegas, pulsing like a strobe light of unending content. Notifications beep, cry for our attention like a child. We cannot resist. It is hooked into us, a drip of Fentanyl, a tick under the skin. We like it here. That's the problem, because for every breath where we are assaulted by silence or boredom, there are a thousand hands offering us escape. Not a real escape, but real enough. Scrolling is like masturbation. Clicking delivers more doses of the shit we think we need. Thinking takes too long, so most of us don't—AI, Google, YouTube—they have replaced thinking. Alexa eats brains for breakfast, but we are the real zombies. Our brains are full of ads and micro plastic, memes and fireworks. You may be reading this and agreeing with it—"totally, for sure!" you say to yourself. But really, though, you want that next hit.

This is the point where you have a choice—this is your make or break moment, when you grab your phone, erase your data from it, and toss it into a lake or a dumpster or a donation bin. Your first thought will be, "Now I have to go buy a new phone." Don't. Remember a book you used to love and go check it out from the library. Walk through the stacks without that tick on your back. Stop and just notice. Breathe in without an online yoga instructor telling you to do it. The exhale will come. In times like these, acts such as this one start revolutions. Once the chains fall to the floor, once the noise is silenced, once the blindfold is lifted, something happens. Now, we can begin. We are blank slates, minds without shackles. Inhale. Let out a scream, from the core of you, like it is rising from the bowels of your soul. Get primal. This is what is needed to become free. We must see the cage, grab the bars, and disintegrate them with fire from our palms.

"It is the world that has been pulled over your eyes to blind you from the truth . . .That you are a slave. Like everyone else you were born into bondage. Into a prison that you cannot taste or see or touch. A prison for your mind."

Morpheus, The Matrix