We may think that we are simply slaves to our CO2-emitting consumerism, but in reality we are slaves to something much more sinister, and increasingly more intelligent: the Thing is a web of manipulation which spans the corporate interests of the psychonomy, political power structures, and popular culture narratives which the human herd has always needed, and looked up to for guidance. Almost every piece of stimulus we are exposed to is being reverse-engineered with specific outcomes in mind. As AI is increasingly brought in to optimize and supercharge this manipulation, what was once a “process” is now literally becoming a being, a “Thing”. We have been witnessing the emergence of a hyper-mutational, adaptive and self-learning form of digital, sentient capitalism which knows us even better than ourselves – and which is increasingly able to censor every last bit of truth that remains, literally turning black into white with terrifying ease.
This necrocapitalist political system, now operated by the Thing, is a self-endorsing digital fascism which can shut down all dissent that may pose a threat to its financial bottom line: not by force, but by misinformation. This is especially easy to achieve, using the old-fashioned tried and tested method: control the sources of information. The new propaganda machine knows how to get on top of the attention economy, and turn it into the fascism of distraction. This is not brainwashing. It is brain inundation to the extent that reality becomes such a minority opinion, it is deemed as conspiracy theory.
George is an author, researcher, chemist, molecular biologist and food scientist. You can follow him on Twitter @99blackbaloons or enjoy his books
George Tsakraklides 
Dear George,
Thank you for this short essay. It contains a warning about the nearest future I am dreading as well. Having spent more than two thirds of my life prior to the invention of the Internet I can clearly see, what has happened to my brain and life by getting used to content presented by social media.
I can’t possibly glorify my “golden” analogue past and how I squandered my time and energy then but I clearly see how much less patient I have become to persisting in reading one book, following one opera, watching one film from beginning to end for example.
Woefully I have to admit that my ability to resist the cunning tricks of manipulation deployed already is so weak and insufficient that I can’t hope to do any better when the demons of AI will soon be unleashed.
Without the Internet and its possibilities I surely hadn’t heard of you ever, of other wonderful voices, had not been able to maintain contact to people I love but who live far away. But how can I be sure when let’s say in April 2024 a video of a lecture by George Tsakraklides would appear on my YouTube account to be genuine or a perfectly done deep fake?
I have closed my Facebook and Twitter/X accesses and am trying to spend more time in the real world but I’m aware that this might not be much of a bulwark at all.
So far and today though I trust to write to the real George to whom I am deeply grateful
Best wishes
Florian
Dear Florian, thank you so much for your message. I promise, I am the real George 🙂
Excellent article. All I might add is that there are a few … not nearly enough … but, who do discern the forest from the trees (a most apt analogy). Hopefully the number of those aware & activist oriented will grow in the short term. Sigh.
Thanks for reading