Algorithm

I swear social media is some kind of malicious worldwide experiment to kill people’s ability to feel joy.

I experience the following several times a day: See an image or read a story or watch a video that makes me laugh. Lightens my day. Dispels a tiny part of the permanent cloud of darkness over my head. I scroll on, still smiling, riding the high, and am immediately accosted with death, agony, or hatred. Perhaps all 3. I freeze with this fucking grin on my face staring at the worst, most caustic shit the world can throw at me. Genocide, murder, rape. While I smile.

I am so, so tired of it. The emotional whiplash. The punishment for feeling an instant of happiness. Just the sheer trickery of it.

You want to talk about a social media algorithm? How about one that fucking *warns you*? How about one that puts the good shit together and the bad shit together, and is like, “Brace yourself, this next part is awful, but it’s important you know it,” instead of just an endless jack-in-the-box alternating between flippant stupidity and soul-rending awfulness? Logging on is just an exercise in psychotic emotional manipulation, from start to finish. I close that fucking window and feel like my mind has been raked with hot coals.