It was 2003. The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, Finding Nemo, and The Matrix Reloaded were released. Call of Duty dropped and I was playing Counter-Strike 1.6. Fuck life was great. I was on MSN Messenger. ICQ. mIRC and all the other jams.
One day we stumbled upon this website that allowed us to share posts and pictures. It was a great – the first sort of real social media. But it was innocent – it was fun. We learnt how to code – how to change our backgrounds, how to add audio – how to do cool shit.
It wasn’t about dopamine fixes or comparing yourself to other people – it was about finding other like minded people to hang out with from other parts of the world who shared the same passions and interest without judgement.
Some how our good friend Tom from Myspace. Sold the business to Murdoch – and then we got introduced to Facebook. We all know what Facebook is – and well as one of the first users for so many online platforms, it hooked us right in. Though little did we know that Zuck was selling all our data and becoming the richest man in the world from it. From that point – I deleted my FB. Same shit has been happening with IG. The algorithm, the dopamine hits and all that crap has burnt many of my braincells and caused much stress.
“You have to understand, most of these people are not ready to be unplugged. And many of them are so inured, so hopelessly dependent on the system, that they will fight to protect it.”
Morpheus to Neo in The Matrix