Everything is moving so fast nowadays. In finance they warn you to not catch falling knives. Don’t buy something whose price is declining rapidly. We’re told to avoid them. Cut losses. Don’t try to buy your way into a reality that isn’t there. Don’t be the last one holding the bag.

But what happens when the whole market cycle feels like a knife storm? When it’s not just markets but society itself? That’s where we are.

This isn’t really about money, as plenty of it is being made (for now). It’s a criticism of ideas, attention, and contribution. Our feeds are tickers. Blinking lights. We tell ourselves to look away, but we always come back. And every time we do, we’re reshaped by people we don’t know, with intentions we can’t see.

Most creators on these platforms don’t create what they want anymore. They create for the moment. Keep the lights blinking. Feed the ticker. Milk whatever attention spike they can, and squeeze the dollars out of it. Sure, “influencers are the new distributors” and blah. It’s a model. But lately it seems like that’s it. Nothing else matters.

Our feeds aren’t expressions. “Taste” as personalization is bullshit. The For You feed isn’t about taste, it’s about impulse. Click once and that single moment rewires your whole feed. The sender dictates more than the receiver. We forfeit control and let others dictate not only what they recommend, but what is fed to us soon after.

So we get shit we never asked for. I didn’t want to watch the Charlie Kirk video. I didn’t want to watch the Charlotte train attack. But people who I don’t follow are sharing videos through my feed. The internet is a firehose, and we’re forced to drink from it. We’ve lost the ability to pause, to seek, to decide where the fuck we actually want to go next. That’s weirdly become a grind for most.

Unlike money, though, what’s the equivalent of moral bankruptcy? Of consumption bankruptcy? Are we even self-aware enough to know what it’s doing to us? No fucking way. We’re addicts, and the game is rigged to keep us hooked. “These platforms are the future.” “Shit or get off the pot.” If you want to be someone, you have to play. 

Worse, the game bends people into shapes they’re not. Because that’s what the machine rewards.

I see it everywhere in crypto. “This is the new meta. This is where the energy is.” Until it isn’t. They say crypto moves fast, but really it just mirrors the internet’s whiplash cycle. And crypto lets you monetize it. Authenticity doesn’t matter. The only thing that matters is the moment. No apologies. Just reactions. If it works, run it back. If it flops, spin up a new alias and try again.

So who’s left to take the opposing view? Who’s willing to build what they actually want to see in the world, not just what will spike in the feed?

Those are the people I want to find.

Everything is moving so fast nowadays. In finance they warn you to not catch falling knives. Don’t buy something whose price is declining rapidly. We’re told to avoid them. Cut losses. Don’t try to buy your way into a reality that isn’t there. Don’t be the last one holding the bag.

But what happens when the whole market cycle feels like a knife storm? When it’s not just markets but society itself? That’s where we are.

This isn’t really about money, as plenty of it is being made (for now). It’s a criticism of ideas, attention, and contribution. Our feeds are tickers. Blinking lights. We tell ourselves to look away, but we always come back. And every time we do, we’re reshaped by people we don’t know, with intentions we can’t see.

Most creators on these platforms don’t create what they want anymore. They create for the moment. Keep the lights blinking. Feed the ticker. Milk whatever attention spike they can, and squeeze the dollars out of it. Sure, “influencers are the new distributors” and blah. It’s a model. But lately it seems like that’s it. Nothing else matters.

Our feeds aren’t expressions. “Taste” as personalization is bullshit. The For You feed isn’t about taste, it’s about impulse. Click once and that single moment rewires your whole feed. The sender dictates more than the receiver. We forfeit control and let others dictate not only what they recommend, but what is fed to us soon after.

So we get shit we never asked for. I didn’t want to watch the Charlie Kirk video. I didn’t want to watch the Charlotte train attack. But people who I don’t follow are sharing videos through my feed. The internet is a firehose, and we’re forced to drink from it. We’ve lost the ability to pause, to seek, to decide where the fuck we actually want to go next. That’s weirdly become a grind for most.

Unlike money, though, what’s the equivalent of moral bankruptcy? Of consumption bankruptcy? Are we even self-aware enough to know what it’s doing to us? No fucking way. We’re addicts, and the game is rigged to keep us hooked. “These platforms are the future.” “Shit or get off the pot.” If you want to be someone, you have to play. 

Worse, the game bends people into shapes they’re not. Because that’s what the machine rewards.

I see it everywhere in crypto. “This is the new meta. This is where the energy is.” Until it isn’t. They say crypto moves fast, but really it just mirrors the internet’s whiplash cycle. And crypto lets you monetize it. Authenticity doesn’t matter. The only thing that matters is the moment. No apologies. Just reactions. If it works, run it back. If it flops, spin up a new alias and try again.

So who’s left to take the opposing view? Who’s willing to build what they actually want to see in the world, not just what will spike in the feed?

Those are the people I want to find.