I’ve spoken on this topic across podcasts and panels, but it bears repeating: this is why I’ve sacrificed my heartbeats. To end the cycle that is quietly killing us.
How We Got Here
Older generations may remember life before this — before social media turned attention into currency, before presidents won or lost on television, before billions were spent learning how to keep you glued to the screen.
Today, everything is engineered for one outcome: engagement.
- Social Media & News – Every scroll, every headline is designed to trigger your fight-or-flight response. Fear, outrage, urgency: this keeps you engaged. And the more you engage, the more data they gather and sell.
- Fast Food – Billions poured into engineering addictive combinations of fat, sugar, and salt to keep you coming back.
- Pharma – A system so warped it incentivizes bad science, lifelong prescriptions, and drugs with side effects worse than the condition itself. We’re handing these out to kids. How did this become normal?
The incentives are perverse. Companies that don’t exploit you die. Those that do thrive. It’s natural selection of the worst for our society.
The Era of Addiction
We now live in the era of addiction and dependency. And wellness — our supposed answer — has too often become just another trap.
I’ve watched companies plagiarize studies that never happened. I’ve seen tech pitched with claims so fraudulent it borders on criminal. Wellness was supposed to heal what medicine broke. Instead, conmen cashed in.
Where Hope Lies
This is the point where I’m “supposed” to sell you something. But I won’t. Because the first step is recognizing the depth of the manipulation: you are the butt of a global joke designed to turn you into the perfect consumer.
And yet, there is hope. Ironically, it comes from technology itself. For the first time, AI gives us a tool to cut through the BS.
Here’s the simplest way to use it:
Hey {AI}, I’m dealing with {XYZ} issue and considering {ABC} solution. Please pull the data on it and its competitors, then BS-meter all of them.
AI isn’t a silver bullet. But it offers something we’ve never had before: the ability to sort fact from fraud in record time. It opens the door to scientific literacy. Use it. Demand better. Prosper.
Because the tragedy isn’t that your attention is being bought — it’s that your life is being sold.
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