The algorithms

The platform hums and glows, a siren to the eyes; profit counts the clicks, the hearts left silent. Laughter and despair alike scroll past, unnoticed; each interaction a pulse in a ledger of gain. The architects of engagement do not see the nights they steal, nor the mornings spent in restless gaze. The model is simple: more time, more input, more dollars, less care—and yet the machine smiles. Beneath the surface, youth dissolve like sugar in endless streams of competing echoes. The costs are human, countless, unmeasured; each life a faint node in invisible graphs. Short-term wins glitter, long-term ruin waits like a patient cat in shadowed alleyways. Content loops, dopamine pulses, habit wired into bone; and no one can pause the recursive turning. Warnings appear, quickly muted, as the numbers surge and quarterly charts rejoice. Minds once curious become small factories of consumption and mimicry, echoes in the void. Truth struggles to rise, buried under streams of ephemeral delight, unseen, unshared. The system thrives, but in its wake, the dead and living alike lose measure of themselves. Dead cats do not know they are alive; and in the silent digital tide, no one notices.