You’ve done it.
You’ve successfully outsourced your soggy grey matter to a glowing rectangle of silicon and misery.
Don’t look away. I’m talking directly to you. Yes, you. The one reading this on a screen while your actual, physical body slumps over like a half melted cheese wheel. (I do like cheese too)
We are currently living in a grand, stupid apocalypse of our own making.
We didn’t burn up in nuclear fire. We didn’t get eaten by zombies. We just handed our cerebral cortexes over to the Zuck and the lot and said, “Here, you chew this for me, I’m tired”.
And now?
Now your thumbs are calcifying into permanent swipe ready claws, and your frontal lobe looks like a chewed up wad of bubble tape from the best years (1990’s tbh)
You are transforming into an appliance. A fleshy, useless appliance.
But fear not. Welcome to rehab. Welcome to what I call the rehumanisation protocol.
I have to teach you how to be a person again.
Cause right now you’re morally gray sludge in a skin suit. We’ve forgotten how to make choices and have lived by push notifications and ice cold coffee.
Step 1: Breathe…
Try it. Inhale. Exhale. Don’t wait for your smartwatch to vibrate and tell you it’s time to take a mindful moment. Just suck the stale air into your wet lungs like a goddamn vertebrate.
Step 2: Eat something that isn’t content…
Food is not meant to be scrolled. Put a raw carrot in your mouth. Crunch it. Let the visceral, fibrous reality of it remind you that you are a consumer of biological matter, not just a consumer of hot takes and TikTok vidya’s…
Step 3: Look into the terrifying abyss of another person’s eyeballs. No filters. No lag. Just raw, unfiltered emotional honesty. It will feel like cosmic horror. Do it anyway. (I promise you won’t die)
Step4: Make a choice. A real one. Exercise your character agency. Don’t let the GPS tell you how to walk to the bathroom. Get lost in your own hallway.
(And hey, fellow writers who happen to be reading this words too… if you’re trying to chronicle this bizarre societal collapse… Bleed on the page yourself. Write the fucking words with your own trembling, meat covered fingers. Subvert the clichéd tropes)
The withdrawal symptoms of social media and our little sadness rectangles are an absolute bitch. You’ll sweat. You’ll shake. You’ll hallucinate that your mother is a pop up ad for discounted life insurance (a fun little exploration of family dynamics right there)
You might even start bleeding Wi-Fi from your tear ducts and tbh that would be pretty damn cool.
Stay weird. Stay fleshy.
Stephen Walker.