The Algorithm Eater

Ravenous and intelligent, this manmade horror devours many of us in the modern age.

Note from the author: Slow days of rotting, more rotting ahead. Wishing everyone a great day and take care of yourselves. A small piece of self-awareness and destruction. Enjoy. ૮ ˶ᵔ ᵕ ᵔ˶ ა

Doomscrolling has become my breath, a wretched rhythm stitched into the tips of my nerves. It is no longer a choice but a reflex, as natural as the heartbeat I scarcely notice until it stutters. I have always held others at a distance—a habit so ingrained it persists even here, cloaked in the anonymity of a screen, adrift in an endless cascade of words and images to gorge upon. And yet, how pitifully I yearn for connection, a fleeting warmth I can neither grasp nor deserve. My nature forbids it. I am a fortress, ever on guard, poised to sabotage any tender thing that dares approach. It is a sickness, I know. A rational man would seek aid, would soften his judgment, would welcome intimacy when it deigns to brush against him. But I am no such man. The scars of a childhood warped by dysfunction cling to me like damp rot, staining my soul, chaining me to boundaries I cannot cross. At times, I deceive myself into thinking this confinement is a virtue—a stable cage. At others, I see it for the poison it is: idle hands beckon the Devil’s whispers, and stillness summons thoughts too dark to name.

On the small screen, I flutter between apps, each a gluttonous maw stuffed with scraps of content I devour in haste. On the larger machine, I hover like a ghost, tracking chats, pouncing on interactions as if they were crumbs of meaning. Were replying to a dozen threads at once an art, I’d be its master—a hollow crown for a hollow king. Short-form content reign supreme now, and I, too, have succumbed. Facts and tales—paranormal flickers, historical echoes, political snarls, the oddities of science—lure me in. For all its flaws, Reddit offers a banquet of “what ifs” and curiosities to gnaw upon. Today, I looked over military musings: strange tactics that won unwinnable wars, habits carved into soldiers’ bones, officers whose quirks outlived their commands. I read, I drift, I sink.

I fear I am falling further still. The days of my youth—when I could devour books whole, when textbooks bent beneath my hunger—are dead. That world, too, is gone, crumbled into a past I cannot reclaim. The algorithm feeds me now, a cruel nursemaid, and I suckle at its teat, too weary to resist. It knows me better than I know myself—my restlessness, my dread, my futile craving for something real. Perhaps this is my fate: to be consumed as I consume, a shadow flickering in the glow of a screen, forever reaching for a hand that will never reach back. How laughable, how tragic, that I should call this living.