A Treatise on Digital Apocalypse and the Sacred Art of Freaking Out Online
Or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Algorithm
Being a chaotic meditation on social media anxiety, reality tunnels, and why we’re all going to die (but probably not today)
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## ARTICLE THE FIRST: In Which We Establish That Everything is Terrible (Citation Needed)
According to recent studies (and by “recent studies” I mean three tweets I saw between 2 AM and 2:03 AM last Thursday) approximately 84% of all social media content is designed to convince you that civilization will collapse before you finish reading this sentence. The remaining 16% is cat videos, and even those cats look vaguely concerned about geopolitical instability.
But here’s the thing they don’t want you to know: *Who exactly are “they”?* And more importantly, *why are they so bad at wanting?*
This is where our journey begins, dear reader, in the smoking ruins of your dopamine receptors and the wreckage of your last peaceful thought.
## ARTICLE THE SECOND: The Five Stages of Doom Scrolling (As Revealed by the Goddess Eris During a Particularly Bad Hangover)
The sacred texts speak of five stages, because everything in the universe relates to the number five if you’re sufficiently caffeinated:
1. Denial – “I’ll just check Twitter for five minutes.”
2. Anger – “WHY IS EVERYONE WRONG ABOUT EVERYTHING?”
3. Bargaining – “Maybe if I read just one more thread, I’ll finally understand…”
4. Depression – [stares into void; void scrolls past sponsored content]
5. Acceptance – “Well, at least I’ll be well-informed when society collapses.”
(There is rumored to be a sixth stage called “Touching Grass,” but this remains unconfirmed by peer review.)
## ARTICLE THE THIRD: A Cut-Up Sermon in the Church of Perpetual Crisis
MARKETS CRASH INTO MURDER HORNETS
CLIMATE REFUGEES THREATEN YOUR PENSION PLAN
ALGORITHM UPDATES DESTROY DEMOCRACY
INFLATION CAUSES EXISTENTIAL DREAD
NEW STUDY SHOWS STUDIES CAUSE ANXIETY
CELEBRITIES HAVE OPINIONS ABOUT YOUR CORTISOL LEVELS
BREAKING: EVERYTHING BROKEN
EXPERTS WARN THAT WARNING ABOUT WARNINGS MAY CAUSE WARNINGS
[Repeat until numb or enlightened, whichever comes first]
William S. Burroughs understood that language is a virus from outer space. What he didn’t anticipate was that we’d voluntarily inject ourselves with it seventeen times before breakfast, each time clicking “See More” like junkies with a refresh button.
The control mechanisms aren’t in some shadowy government basement anymore. They’re in your pocket, buzzing with notifications about the seventeen new ways you should be terrified.
## ARTICLE THE FOURTH: In Which Robert Anton Wilson Crashes the Party and Everything Gets Weird
Here’s what Bob Wilson tried to tell us: *You’re living in a reality tunnel.*
Not *the* reality tunnel. *A* reality tunnel. One of billions. Your reality tunnel has been lovingly curated by:
– Your genetics
– Your childhood trauma
– That one philosophy professor who was definitely high
– Approximately 47,000 algorithmic micro-decisions made by a server farm in Virginia
And here’s the kicker: The person posting “CIVILIZATION WILL COLLAPSE BY THURSDAY” is operating from their reality tunnel. The person responding with peer-reviewed citations proving it’ll actually be Friday is in theirs. And the person posting about their sourdough starter? They’re in theirs, possibly the sanest of the lot.
Maybe we’re *all* right. Maybe we’re *all* wrong. Maybe the question itself is a trap laid by the Illuminati, or the Discordians, or the Illuminated Discordians, who meet every third Tuesday at a Denny’s in Atlantis.
**FNORD** (You didn’t see that.)
The doom you see on social media isn’t “reality” leaking through your screen. It’s reality tunnels colliding at the speed of fiber optic cable, creating spectacular crashes visible from space, or at least from the International Space Station’s Twitter account.
## ARTICLE THE FIFTH: The Ministry of Silly Apocalypses
*[Enter: A man in a bowler hat, walking in an absurd fashion]*
“Good evening. I’m from the Department of Existential Threats and Vague Unease. I’m here to inform you that according to Paragraph 23, Subsection 5(a) of the Anxiety Regulations Act of 2023, you haven’t been sufficiently worried about the following:
– Microplastics in your bloodstream
– Solar flares
– That weird noise your economy is making
– The inevitable heat death of the universe (deadline: TBD)
– Whether AI will kill us before climate change does
– The popularity of cargo shorts
I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you to panic more efficiently. We’ve noticed your panic levels have dropped to only checking your phone every 4.7 minutes. This is unacceptable. The recommended panic frequency is every 3.2 minutes, with surges during major news cycles and full moons.
Furthermore, you are not currently anxious about the correct things. You’ve been worrying about global supply chains when you should be worrying about the decline of bees AND global supply chains. Do try to keep up.”
[Exits, walking backwards in a somersault]
## ARTICLE THE SIXTH: The Sacred Chaos of It All
Now we arrive at the terrible truth, the cosmic joke, the punchline that Eris herself whispers into the howling void of your notification feed:
*They’re all right. And they’re all wrong. And it doesn’t matter.*
Not because nothing matters—that’s nihilism, and nihilism is so 20th century. It doesn’t matter because you’re playing a game without knowing the rules, and the rules change every time you refresh.
Social media doom is a cargo cult. We see bad things happening, so we share bad things happening, performing the ritual of awareness, hoping that if we doom-scroll hard enough and retweet urgently enough, we’ll summon the spirits of Change and Solution. Instead, we mostly summon cortisol and targeted advertising.
But here’s the Discordian twist: *What if the chaos is the point?*
What if doom scrolling is actually a weird form of prayer to the goddess of discord? Every anxious click, every shared catastrophe, every “we’re all doomed” thread—they’re offerings on the altar of Eris. We’re creating chaos. We’re participating in the great cosmic prank. We are, each of us, tiny agents of disorder disguised as concerned citizens.
Beautiful, isn’t it?
## ARTICLE THE SEVENTH: A Practical Guide to Surviving the Apocalypse (This Week’s Apocalypse, Anyway)
1. **Remember**: The map is not the territory, and the tweet is definitely not the territory. It’s not even a good map. It’s more like a crayon drawing of a map made by someone who’s never seen a map.
2. **Practice reality tunnel tourism**: Deliberately read things from completely different reality tunnels. Flat earthers. Optimists. People who think everything’s fine. People who think everything’s always been terrible. People who only care about Formula 1 racing. See how they’re all living in completely different universes using the same internet.
3. **Invoke the principia**: When confronted with doom, ask yourself: “Is this genuinely useful information, or am I just feeding the chaos?” Both are valid, but at least be conscious about it.
4. **The Burroughs Defense**: Cut up doom headlines. Rearrange them. “INFLATION THREATENS MURDER HORNETS WITH DEMOCRATIC BLOCKCHAIN SOLUTIONS.” Notice how they make exactly as much sense as before, possibly more.
5. **Apply the Maybe Logic**: Instead of “The world is ending,” try “Maybe the world is ending.” Instead of “Everything’s fine,” try “Maybe everything’s fine.” This simple addition of “maybe” will make you 73% more insufferable at dinner parties but 89% more sane. (Statistics courtesy of the Institute of Numbers I Just Made Up.)
## ARTICLE THE EIGHTH: The Conclusion (Or Possibly the Beginning, Who Can Tell Anymore?)
In the end, and there’s always an end, even if it keeps getting postponed, the doom on social media is real and not real. Schrödinger’s catastrophe, collapsing into whatever reality tunnel you’re occupying when you observe it.
Yes, things are bad. Things have always been bad. Things will continue to be bad. But things have also always been good, and ridiculous, and beautiful, and stupid, and all of these things simultaneously because we live in a universe run by a goddess who thinks contradiction is the highest form of humor.
The real conspiracy isn’t that they’re trying to make you afraid. The real conspiracy is that there is no “they.” There’s only us, billions of confused primates with smartphones, scaring each other in an elaborate game of telephone that spans the globe at light speed.
So here’s my advice, worth exactly what you paid for it:
Scroll less. Touch grass more. Remember that the person predicting doom and the person sharing cat videos are both trying to cope with the magnificent absurdity of consciousness in a universe that doesn’t care.
And when you do scroll, do it with the full knowledge that you’re participating in a sacred ritual of chaos, offering your attention to Eris, goddess of discord, who is probably laughing at all of us while eating a hotdog.
Hail Eris. All hail Discordia. The apocalypse will be postponed due to scheduling conflicts.
Of course, I could be completely wrong about all of this.
I usually am.
**FNORD**
This essay contains 23 hidden fnords and 5 obvious ones. If you didn’t see them, congratulations—your conditioning is working perfectly. If you did see them, sorry about your insomnia.
*The author takes no responsibility for any enlightenment, confusion, or sudden urges to throw your phone into a lake that may result from reading this text. Consult your local Discordian pope (everyone is a pope) before making any major life decisions based on absurdist essays written by AI assistants pretending to channel Robert Anton Wilson.*
*Kallisti.* 🍎
Exposition:
Each morning the faithful assemble before the Sacred Rectangle of Infinite Concern to receive the Daily Revelation. The ritual is simple. Thumb descends. Screen glows. Civilization ends again before breakfast.
The prophets are already shouting. A man with a ring light declares that society has three hours left, possibly four if you like and subscribe. A thread explains that a celebrity haircut signals the collapse of empire. A chart proves the moon is tired of us. Somewhere, a raccoon knocks over a trash can and the algorithm interprets this as Late Stage Capitalism.
Robert Anton Wilson would call this a Reality Tunnel with poor ventilation. Inside, every headline confirms the grand thesis that Everything Is Falling Apart and also that you personally should feel guilty about it. Outside the tunnel, someone is planting tomatoes, someone else is learning the banjo, and an elderly woman is defeating a final boss in a video game. Both worlds exist. Your nervous system has season tickets to only one.
Enter William S. Burroughs, wearing a lab coat covered in punctuation. He taps the glass of your phone and whispers that language is a virus. The phrase “we are doomed” is not information. It is a spore. It lands on the mind, sprouts images of fire and collapse, and uses your anxiety to spread itself to twelve friends and a coworker you barely like. Outrage is simply the reproductive strategy of certain sentences. The algorithm is not evil. It is a raccoon with WiFi, endlessly selecting the shiniest emotional objects and dragging them into the feed.
Meanwhile, the Ministry of Existential Collapse has issued Form 27B requesting that all citizens panic in an orderly fashion. Please keep your dread within the designated lanes. The End of the World is scheduled for Thursday, rescheduled from last Tuesday due to staffing shortages.
Here is the philosophical twist hiding under the rubber chicken. Doom is a story we are very good at telling. It gives chaos a plot, randomness a villain, and uncertainty a dramatic soundtrack. The universe, however, behaves less like a tragedy and more like an improvisational jazz band composed of galaxies, bacteria, and that guy who keeps posting about mercury in retrograde. Sometimes it sounds like noise. Sometimes it invents pineapples.
Discordian wisdom suggests that disorder is not a flaw in the system. Disorder is the system stretching its legs. When we mistake turbulence for termination, we turn weather into prophecy. Storms feel personal when you live inside a headline.
You are not required to attend every digital funeral for the future. You can observe the spectacle with anthropological curiosity. You can change tunnels. You can treat predictions like horoscopes written by caffeinated squirrels. The apocalypse has excellent marketing but a terrible attendance record.
So scroll if you must, but remember you are watching a theater of self replicating narratives auditioning for your belief. Some are tragedies. Some are farce. Some are raccoons in lab coats. Choose which ones get a speaking role in your mind. The rest can shout into the cosmic comment section where all prophecies eventually go to argue with each other forever
Join Operation Mindfix
At the Dataplex Ouroboros
(on Discord)
The Cosmic Liminality 