In one of Philip K. Dick's most popular novellas, "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?", people dialled a number on an electronic device, a "mood organ", and would feel whatever they wanted: Erotic love, crippling depression, contentment, severe argument with spouse for two hours, any emotional state was immediately granted them once the correct code was entered.
Whether it was good for the person who was with the dialler was a different thing.
'So I left the TV sound off and I sat down at my mood organ and I experimented. And I finally found a setting for despair… So I put it on my schedule for twice a month; I think that's a reasonable amount of time to feel hopeless about everything...' How much time do you set aside each month for specific moods?" - Philip K. Dick
It isn't a huge leap of the imagination to see how by selecting a social media group(s) on Facebook, reddit et al. that people are immediately directed to a screen showing a Web page where people have posted content full of whatever anyone could choose, sorted by an AI algorithm according to their likes and dislikes, judged by time spent viewing and no doubt other factors, shaped by society yet some content is more beneficial to some than others.
From cute animals, to footage of executions, with in-betweens such as road rage videos, pranks, cosplays of anyone and/or anything and so on, the explosion of memes and memetics is shaping society faster than ever before, thanks to the volume of data transferred worldwide on a daily basis.
As PKD noted, people would choose both positivity and negativity for themselves. After an hour of anime, someone may want to watch a documentary, then watch insects feasting upon a corpse, then cars crashing while people bungee jump between them.
The point is, that people choose what they want and the chemical response in the body and brain, combined with the emotional and informational stimuli received to mind and body is fed at a faster and faster pace on a newsfeed or equivalent. A social media user finding themselves with some free time, if they aren't careful (as I haven't been), scrolling through post after post, thoughts and stimuli become short-circuited by contrasting and conflicting inputs to the senses.
The number of times I've been reading a post and feeling empathic with the content of someone's eulogy, or the sweet nostalgia from a childhood item, only to be disrupted by a video of an obnoxious influencer selling stock market information with loud attention-grabbing music and my thoughts and feelings are disturbed. To watch a video of a kitten playing with a puppy, then switching to the latest Redband video trailer can cause unexpected results upon a person.
Worse yet, there is only the option to hide content, which would mean missing out on the topic altogether. Yes, I can keep scrolling or turn my phone off and contemplate what I have just received.
If not deliberately thought to do so, the mind would start to become conditioned to expect disturbance from another video or post, and in a dystopian Pavolovian response, cease to respond for more than a few seconds after receiving compatible appropriate responses to positive or negative information, both online and IRL.
People require an amount of time to fulfill their desires of various types and contrary to the above, if someone receives too much of a repeated stimuli (Desire-response? Thoughtform? Answers on a postcard) the sense become bloated and deafened, or an addiction is formed via repeated feeling and chemical reaction.
This could be ingrained into software the same as gambling software does: "You've watched this cat paw it's owner for five hours now, are you sure you don't want to watch/do something else?"
Facebook is worse than several other sites as it tries to remove negativity as a legitimate response.
When it was first released to the public after a brief stint in University, the only available reaction was a "like". A symbolic thumbs up. People posting their family had been murdered by rabid mongoose would receive 800+ thumbs-up 👍 responses from everyone else they knew. The effect on those in mourning was unprecedented. "My best friend said to me it's good and positive that happened! So did 799 other people! I can't be right for feeling 'like' this, I'm subconsciously changing....waaagĝhhh...." could be a viable thought process in the past, to varying degrees, despite the adaption of ironic likes that perpetuate still I.T.Y.O.O.Like. 2023.
After large public rebuttal, Facebook added love ❤️, care, sad 😔, haha 😄 and angry 😡 to their list of acceptable reactions - hardly the gamut of human emotion and years behind the likes of WhatsApp, despite being owned by the same company and yet used by many millions (including me at the moment).
Still, it remains unacceptable to give a thumbs down to your mate who was mugged for a choc ice to feed a crack-addicted toddler.
In writing this, I hope we are soon at the time once more before corporate censorship, or government firewalls (as is in place in India, to a business extent the U.K., Morocco, and many other countries as reported by other users) where every type of conceivable data is accessible and integrated, rather than the failed approach of banning, country or Internet wide, data deemed unhealthy or in breach of ideals, leading to an underground of gore and rape fantasies for curious adolescents.
Not that any of that damaged the 90's kids I write, pocketing the bloodstained lock of her hair, the only thing that still gives feeling to the blackened husk that is my soul as I prepare the next runaway child to be sacrificed to Moloch.
I mean, wasn't the free Internet of the 90's cooler, jaded and scarred as we may be now?
Immanentise the eschaton! Release full reality VR full haptic body sensors to respond authentically to every perceivable situation!
Let the death waivers be signed and may the next Aeon be more glorious and terrible as is desired by the All!
