By George Coupland
‘Bzzzzt…. Message received…. 14:39…. Kthunk’
38.8719° N, 77.0563° W
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Good news from Earth.
The latest component of our plan to infiltrate the human race has been a decisive success. TikTok is now fully embedded into the Earth Monkeys’ culture.
After assimilating with the humans since we introduced them to the Internet in 1983, I have observed a complete degradation in both their social aptitude and mental cognition as a whole. While they believe that ‘their’ creation of the Internet has heightened their connectivity with one another, I’ve watched as even a task as small as ordering coffee has become a monumentally stressful event for the individual. The implementation of social media has destroyed the average human’s confidence to such an extent that they will now do almost anything to avoid social interaction.
I watch them sitting on their busses and trains, completely disconnected from the world. Even when they are with companions, I see their fingers twitch and reach for their pockets, craving an easy flow of dopamine. It has become so difficult for them to interact with the world around them, they cannot go a few minutes without checking their social media or scrolling TikTok.
I have observed their productivity crumble. When met with an even slightly undesirable prospect, they return to a familiar loop of irrelevant media to distract themselves. The humans have coined this habit ‘doom scrolling’. My brain scans of humans in this trance-like state have shown concerningly low levels of activity.
I believe the humans have become so conditioned to short-form content that upon our removal of the Internet, they will be ‘sitting ducks’ (excuse my Earthling language) and the planet will be ripe for our taking.
In fact, I would not be at all surprised if, without TikTok, we will see a number of them instantly perish when faced with having to focus on the ‘real world’ for any length of time greater than 30 Earth minutes.
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George is studying psychology at the University of Adelaide, where he hopes to graduate with the power to read minds. He currently writes as a hobby, hoping to one day combine the two for infinite source material. Until then, he just guesses.
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