The Scrollpocalypse...
How the internet ate our brains (am i low key starting a conspiracy???)
PART 1: 5 YEARS AGO
It’s 2025 and I have a dent in my head.
I don’t know if I was born with it or if I acquired it somewhere along the way.
Like if my dad dropped me while trying to spoon-feed us Cherry Garcia for breakfast. Or when I went snowboarding with my mom in Park City and forgot how to stop, cartwheeled down the hill like a demonic snow angel, swallowed my own blood, and lost my phone in a mound of snow.
Regardless, my head is dented and I don’t know why.
I Google: “why is my head dented?”
Because Google knows all.
And no one knows me better than him and his algorithm.
27 minutes later, I’m on Reddit, spiraling over images of bald men’s heads.
They should go to Turkey with that dented thing, I think to myself.
At least I have my hair.
One point for women.
Google processes over 5 trillion searches a year.
I know this because I copied it from one part of the internet and pasted it into this part.
Now you know it too.
But I’m weird. And when my questions get weird too, I turn to his hot stepsister for answers.
ChatGPT.
She’s insane. She told me 8 cool things I could do with the dent in my head.
Now, between Google and Chat, 52 minutes have passed, and I can no longer feel my brain.
So I reach for TikTok to wake it up.
But I can’t.
Because it’s dead.
Tiktok failed to load.Enable 3rd party cookies or use another browser
I try to revive myself like trying to restart a dead Tamagotchi with a toothpick.
But nothing happens.
Just the dull flatline of my own attention span.
I can feel my lungs, but not the brain.
My scroll knows no end. My tabs have no limit.
There’s a low-grade infection crawling through me.
I can’t tell if I’m inside the internet or if it’s inside me.
A hunch in my back. A tightness behind the eyes. A weight in the thumbs.
There is this overwhelming sense that I’ve been rewired.
Can I Google a virus if it’s the thing infecting me?
Meta.
Can I ask ChatGPT how to fix the part of me that ChatGPT broke?
Meta.
5 years ago, it began.
Covid-19, the virus.
The quarantine.
The paradox.
A national security plan, designed for safety, was the bait that reeled us in.
The linchpin that numbed us slowly.
The mission to isolate and rewire.
We belong to the algorithm now.
Maybe the real zombies don’t look like the movies.
Maybe they look like this.
Like me.
Like you.
Instead of a hunger for flesh, we are salivating for validation.
If instead of brains, we crave likes.
Feast on content.
This is our modern day zombie apocalypse.
The Scrollpocalypse (yes, I hate myself too for that lol) (is ApocaGLITCH better???)
ANYWAY…
Here are eyewitness reports from inside societies current collapse of attention.
Of agency.
Of wellness.
Of reality.
PART 2:EYE WITNESS REPORTS
Subject #012: Travis / @TravyGains5671
X Bio:
💪 5AM Barry’s Bootcamp Club 💼 The Life Insurance Guy 🫡 #MAGA 2025
Trav wakes up at 5 AM. Eats raw liver “for testosterone.” Goes to Barry’s strictly at 5am in head-to-toe Lululemon. Sweats out last night’s tequila and stares at himself mid-squat until he gets hard. For himself.
Bills it all to corporate like a true patriot.
Loves Jeff Bezos.
(because balding early + divorcing a novelist + a 2nd destination wedding with a jet fuel footprint = goals… but I digress…)
Average daily dopamine intake:
30mg Adderall.
250mg caffeine.
37 minutes of porn.
Sells you and your mom whole life insurance so he can retire early in Palm Springs despite not feeling his own heartbeat since 2022.
Won’t go to therapy, but cries during Joe Rogan podcasts.
Claims Wim Hof and Goggins saved his life.
Voted for Trump. Drove his girlfriend to two abortions last year.
Subject #027: Amy / @ifuseekAmyyyy32
X Bio:
📸 Content creator ✨ Mental health advocate ❤️ Business inquiries: UTA 💌
Amy made $42K last month from brand deals on coconut water, pimple cream, and prozac.
Never voted but according to Forbes is the voice of our generation. Got a boob job and veneers on her dad’s Amex, but was honest about it online because she’s so real.
Amy has 4.3 million followers and is exhausted from the scene but hasn’t missed a party since she got off accutane.
Lives in L.A. where she films her iconic “How To Glow Up” TikToks while ICE breaks down her neighbors’ door but doesn’t acknowledge it because politics aren’t her thing.
Cries on her Story about being misunderstood, then posts a thirst trap to recover.
Subject #031: Asher / @CryptoSlayBaddie
X Bio:
🌱 Conscious Crypto Creative 🎨 NFT mafia for social justice … DM to be part of the most dynamic meme coin community
Asher lost $800K in Ethereum. Now lives in his parents’ pool house in Malibu.
Creates AI generated NFTs about prison abolition. Only speaks in DAO once he steps into SoHo House.
Wears mesh running shorts with no underwear.
Claims he’s “not like other crypto guys” because he microdoses before checking the market for liberation. Not liquidity.
His collective: BailFundBabies
Latest drop: “Freedom Should Be Free™”
Only accessible via Ethereum. $312. Gas fees not included.
Won’t get a job because capitalism is a “boner kill,” but calls it sovereignty.
Just bought a house in the Palisades.
With his trust fund.
Subject #019: Kalea / @SpiritualGangster93
X Bio:
🌕 Trauma doula ❤️ Professional raw milk-fairy spreading love + helping women transmute emotional chaos into cashflow
Kalea lives in Santa Monica but tags Topanga.
Speaks in a dialect: 60% astrology, 30% trauma jargon, 10% spiritualTok
Doesn’t identify with time because it’s a colonial construct that inflames her nervous system.
Her apartment is filled with plants she forgets to water and tears she collects “to witness herself” to be released at the next full moon coven gathering.
She drinks raw milk from a mason glass jar and drinks “detox tea” just in case it has ebola. Her skincare routine includes bee venom, salmon sperm and enough red light therapy to cancel out wifi radiation though she pays for high-speed to go live on IG.
At night, she tapes her mouth shut with $50 pink sleep tape because The Skinny Confidential told her to. While DMing people she can’t answer because she’s protecting her peace.
Eats vegan butter with a spoon first thing in the morning to lube her GI tract but hasn’t pooped in 72 hours.
Claims she’s allergic to canola oil, swears the butter changed her skin, got canceled the moment someone read the label (because it contains canola oil).
Won’t get a vaccine but drinks her own pee and eats sperm for collagen.
Her boyfriend’s a shaman-DJ-mushroom farmer who gave her chlamydia. But also ‘deep clarity,’ so apparently that cancels it out.
She’s permanently “on the edge of a rebirth.” It’s been 17 months.
PART 3: THE GLITCH
The internet gave us safety when the world shut down.
It gave us connection when mandates locked us inside.
A mouth when the world gave us masks.
A swipe when romance had no dark bar to blush in.
A scroll when we needed a shoulder.
A job when our real ones disappeared.
A home of our own when we couldn’t pay rent.
Blue light when the world went dark.
It gave us everything when real life offered nothing.
A place to flirt.
To cry.
To sell nudes.
To protest.
To party.
To be hot.
To see Mom.
To live.
And now?
We’re attached to The Glitch.
Integrating it into the real world like zombies released from digital quarantine.
Restless.
Hungry.
Searching for something to fill the void between posts.
More to scroll.
More money to make.
More likes to count.
More content to prove.
More anything but the truth.
Because the more we chase, the more we blur.
We are so full.
And so unsatisfied.
Too connected online and too disconnected in reality.
And we’re starting to look like what we became behind those doors:
Alive, but not really living.
Moving, but not arriving.
Fed, but never full.
And the worst part?
We call this healing.
But we’re already dead.
Credit where credit’s due:
This essay was inspired by WWZ by Max Brook and Honor Levy’s Internet Girl.
OH.
And 28 Years Later which I just watched and it was AWESOME!!
I’m really feeling bad for Kalea’s plants right now