A Brief History of the Dopamine Dystopia

Social Media, AI and Frankenpolitics Laboratories

Today’s humans are the most interlinked yet most disconnected. Despite access to magical technology enabling us to reach anyone, anywhere, anytime, cheaper and faster than ever imagined, we’ve ended up hopelessly isolated. This technology has gifted each of us with our own vast, personal desert: one we can be exploring for days on end, and never even come across another soul. Friendship is a transaction of chat messages and social media likes, real friends compete with virtual ones, and society is a simulation of its former self: a treacherous room full of mirrors you walk into, unclear of what is real and what may be a reflection. It is no wonder many are choosing to further isolate. Whether it is government services or dating apps, the very technology that was meant to bring us together is now asking us for ransom in order to simply allow us to see, speak with, or touch another real human.

Yet the onslaught of technology continues. Global capital keeps orienting humans towards the same jobs, apps, products and entertainment narcotics that tore society apart in the first place. Our emotional diet has become as artificial as modern food: packed with synthetic wholesomeness, AI-generated validation, over-processed affection and very little spiritual nutrition. We are overconsuming emojis only to end up back in the neurotransmitter fast-food counter seconds later, asking for the dopamine super meal.

In a world where humans are increasingly choosing technology over other humans for long stretches of their day, whatever is left of society has become a skeleton web of financialized transactions. But this type of “society” is as vulnerable to collapse as a Ponzi scheme.

Yet this was all part of a business plan. Information technology did not enter our lives to bring us closer, but to be a gatekeeper: monetizing every second of every conversation, every word of every sentence, every intimate detail shared. From Facebook to Instagram, TikTok and online dating apps, advertisers were there right from the start butting in like a third wheel in our interactions. As we abandoned each other in favour of the new best friend in our pocket, global capital stepped in to fill our vast emotional desert with consumeristic oases and quick hits of low-grade dopamine. We relinquished our social skills in exchange of the protection of invisible algorithm pimps, becoming junkies to pay-as-you-go validation. Instead of connecting us, this system left us high and dry, having nothing to show for our experience but Fear of Missing Out and anxiety about everything. Society became the economy, the chase for happiness became a chase for products, and the health of a community was now measured not in good deeds, but in levels of retail footfall over the weekend. You HAVE TO support the economy. So go out there, give all your money back to your pimp, and don’t forget to leave a five-star rating about your overall experience. It will help this digital dystopia know how to better manipulate you next time.

But as our new version of friendship became further commoditised, it began competing with toilet paper: essential, available in quantity, but only good for single use. Our new AI “friends” were more human than humans: available 24-7 and always coming with superb product recommendations. Loneliness became incredibly comfortable as new distractions provided one after another instant dopamine microdose enough to make it through just the next five seconds of existence. As technology continued to take the mickey out of us, we became hallucinations of our former selves firmly stuck in a crevasse between the real and the virtual. It was too late now to figure out how to even get the fuck out of this trap.

As our relationships turned into fast-moving consumer goods, our need for a steady supply of this new, quickly perishable form of connection would grow and become a massive new economy bigger than prostitution, psychotherapy and religion combined. Our conversations in the online dopaverse were monitored, digitized, monetized and fed directly into the training programs of AI algorithms. We were not simply cash cows now. As our own science and technology began to aim the microscope lens back at us, we became a new form of digital microbial life to be meticulously studied in our billions: our consumer desires and insecurities, our voting patterns, group dynamics and above all, our most vulnerable areas.

Consumatronic advertising was only level one in this game. Soon came the manipulation of our political views, for the few of us conscious enough to have any left. For a dopaminized and transactionalized general public, it was only a matter of time before one of the highest levels of our discourse, politics, would follow suit and submit to the algorithms. It too, would fall prey to capital and turn into one, big, disconcerting room of mirrors. Because if you really want to take control, you need to influence politics. Global capital seized control of politics by controlling media narratives. Taking decades of lessons from consumer marketing, political media dropped all pretences and fully transformed itself from the industry of fact to the art of deception, distraction and manipulation. Today global capital selects which political parties it wants to support, and the algorithms do the rest. Brainwashing may sometimes take decades, but as with consumer marketing, persistence and repetition are key: the lies are put on a loop until they eventually become the truth.

This next-level information dystopia was made possible through two fundamental developments: a profound shift in how the average human interfaced with information, and the onset of sophisticated web-based psychological manipulation. With our vision limited to what we could see through the filters of an algorithm-driven media machine, we became passive receptacles to the unreality being served. Siloed, oversaturated and at the same time emotionally starved, many of us were easily preyed upon by extreme dogmas from the comfort of our own homes and without even having an exchange with a real human. It was THAT easy. Because behind harmless click-bait there are always agendas. Behind paywalls there are oligarchs. And behind all of this, there are algorithms personally assigned to each and every one of us, producing custom made “content” to service both the agendas and their corresponding oligarchs.

I may not be a data tech brainchild, but I have enough of my brain left intact to have figured out that the algorithmic mechanics behind today’s misinformation dystopia are as terrifying as they are mystifying. Totalitarian software applications decide who sees and who doesn’t which type of content and from who, as viral posts are now largely manufactured and dissenting posts get blocked (go on, try this yourself on Linkedin where you will get a “sorry, post failed” reply without even an explanation from a real human). We had a mere glimpse of these capabilities at the time of Carole Cadwalladr’s brilliant exposure of Cambridge Analytica’s role in influencing elections and referenda across major economies. Her work exposed the then emergent misinformation dystopia which hides behind social media algorithms.

But this technology has made leaps and bounds since then. AI programs hiding in remote servers are piecing together digital replicas of each one of us, Frankenstein versions of ourselves assembled from any bits of data they can get their circuits on: something we said online, bought, commented on, or who we are friends with. With each cat video or social media post we engage, the voodoo doll takes an even more uncanny resemblance to us. Once the replica is ready, its owner can start playing with it, see how it reacts to various draft messaging. Once these messages are fully tested on the doll and given the OK, the propaganda narratives are refined, given a binge-worthy Hollywood makeover, and eventually unleashed as large-scale viral social media campaigns on real humans. Society will never be the same. It HAS never been the same.

This indoctrination technology will soon be invincible as AI programs get to know the ins and outs of our psychology better and faster than a 10-year session with the world’s best psychotherapist. The reason this system continues to increase our access to the cyberspace is exactly so that it can harvest more of our data to complete its creation of our voodoo doll. Our digital footprint is being used to piece together our psychological DNA, much like a forensic scientist stealing a hair or nail clipping from us. The price we have paid for our make-believe consumatronic freedom is surveillance, but surveillance itself is the least of our problems. This is not about trying to sell us more Coca Cola anymore. They know which stimulus will trigger us, how to convert our anger to a vote, an insurrection, or to simply self-censor. Welcome to the frankenpolitics laboratory. Anything you have ever done or said will be used against you without your consent. In fact, without you even knowing. We don’t owe you any explanations.

Although politics took a while to finally embrace the fast-consumption dopamine economy, it did so at the perfect time when the misinformation apparatus had already been beta tested over decades of product promotion, viral media and digital entertainment. Conversation and debate quickly became communication tools of the stone age, utterly useless against powerful AI entities that can extinguish truth with a single knock-out blow on the first round. Sensationalised fake news, shitfluencer infomercials, TikTok clickbait and all kinds of truth molestation, almost all of it AI-crafted and pre-tested even before its release, is the new type of “content” we can expect, which the modern human brain has very little defence against. Passive screen exposure has replaced the dying art of critical thinking. Those who actually question what they see on their screens must be terrorists, dissidents, or at the very least conspiracy theorists belonging to a “loner” cult.

In the same way that capitalism only cares about selling, our financialized democracy only cares about selling to us the illusion that it exists. Political “debates” are beginning to merge into their own commercial breaks, and politicians themselves have become soft drinks: you cannot ask them questions or find out where they were made, by who, and under what conditions, but they will always have five bullet points ready to tell you about why you should buy them. Politics is a supermarket war between memes, product claims and half-truths aiming to turn impulse consumers into impulse voters. People have neither the time nor desire for political debate. All their effort was exerted already just to make it to the political supermarket. They pick the first politician staring them at eye level on the shelf, quickly dunk them in the shopping cart and move on to the cashier.

But why debate anyway, or bother to vote for that matter, when all political parties advocate a self-destructive economic system where political mobsters and their buddies preside over a Mad Max cleptocracy? Politics is now owned by global capital, just as the economy is owned by a dozen multinational corporations. There is no conversation or political debate other than a glammed-up dogma of impossible economic growth on a collapsing planet. Voters are not asked to elect which future society they want, but which of these candidate mobsters should steal from them in the next government while tech oligarchs monetize the last resources left on Earth.

Global capital is the biggest threat to civilisation because it has broken democracy and shut down the social and environmental debates we desperately need to balance profit with our own extinction. Along with frankenpolitics, we have zombie social and environmental movements who have been bought out by sponsors themselves. The minute any social justice movement becomes sponsored, it ceases to be a movement and becomes a product with its own commercial target, margin of operation, and employees who must shut up, live and breathe the “brand” or go home. The global dopamine supermarket is ever-expanding, engulfing and subjugating its critics through the most effective action: to simply buy them out, assimilate them and turn them into a franken version of themselves.

If you want to encourage my voice, please support my work by becoming a paid subscriber to this newsletter so that it can continue. I have minimal overheads, no sponsors I sell myself to, bosses who tell me what to write (or NOT write), or staff I have to pay. I’m here for you, raw and dedicated. Your support is immensely appreciated.

George is an author, scientist and researcher covering the polycrisis

My Books

tsakraklides.com