Congratulations, Everything Is Content

On AI-made “reality,” algorithm fatigue, and wanting my life back.

Lately, I’ve been feeling disenchanted. With everything. With the state of our world, our country, technology, social media, and consumerism. The utter discomfort of being human in a world that has long forgotten what humanity means.

This isn’t a passing mood. In fact, it has been building for months.

The little story we were handed about progress, convenience, and “staying connected” tastes like plastic in my mouth. I can feel it in my body, too. A tightness behind my ribs. A tiredness that sleep doesn’t fix. A low-grade dread that shows up like a notification I can’t swipe away.

And I keep thinking, quietly, like I’m confessing something shameful.

Is it supposed to feel like this?

There’s a version of culture that tries to paint this thought as “negativity.” As if the only acceptable way to be alive right now is upbeat, optimized, grateful, and smiling through clenched teeth.

My body and my brain aren’t buying it.

Some days I open my phone, and it’s like stepping into a crowd that’s already shouting. Tragedy. Hot takes. Ads dressed up as advice. People performing their lives for views and likes. Someone selling me a new way to become acceptable. Another, offering a ten-step plan to fix the fact that being alive is hard.

And then, underneath all that noise, I feel the older truth that I don’t know how to explain without reaching for something ancient.

I miss the human pace.

I miss the kind of life where your attention belonged to you. Where your eyes weren’t being harvested. Where your nervous system didn’t have to process the grief of the entire world before breakfast.

As a Gen-xer, I miss the days when newscasts were actually news rather than opinions. A time when you could turn off the TV or close the paper to stop it. I miss the days when people had to call you at home, and if you didn’t answer, they had to call back. There was never an expectation of instant gratification.

A lot of us are walking around with this invisible spiritual nausea. We’re overstimulated. Under-touched. Over-informed. Under-nourished. Surrounded by content and starving for meaning.

We’re spending our lives inside systems that profit (a lot) from our disorientation.

And when you start to see it clearly, disenchantment (or rage) shows up.

Disenchantment can feel lonely, because plenty of people would rather keep scrolling than admit they feel hollow. It can make you feel like you’re the problem, because the world keeps insisting that if you’re unhappy, you simply haven’t optimized hard enough.

Disenchantment, for me, is what happens when my body refuses to keep nodding along. It’s what happens when my spirit stops agreeing to the deal.

I can feel how this era pulls us away from ourselves.

Forget what you like. Forget what you need. Forget what your grief sounds like when it isn’t packaged for a platform. Forget how to sit in a room without reaching for something that will numb you. Forget that you are an animal with seasons, not a machine built for output.

Forget that your life is not content. That being human has always included slowness, community, touch, silence, stories told face-to-face, and time to stare at the sky without turning it into a lesson.

And now, layered on top of all of that, we’re watching reality itself get edited.

AI is a massive part of my disenchantment, too.

People’s fears about it taking over make sense to me. They’re clearly not irrational.

I check Instagram and laugh at a cute video. A dog that “talks.” A baby with perfect timing. A sweet, tender little moment that looks candid.

Then I realize it isn’t even real. Or it’s staged. Or it’s been smoothed, generated, and polished into a version of life that never existed.

And something in me goes cold. I become enraged. Then I begin to question my own rationality. Enraged over a cat video. Because there isn’t enough going on around us to cause rage.

But think about it: even our smallest moments are being repackaged. Even our ordinary life is being manufactured for engagement. Even kindness has to prove itself now.

We’re being trained to question our own eyes (while never questioning the powers around us). We’re being taught to treat human life like a genre. We’re living with that quiet, constant suspicion underneath everything:

Is this even true?

I know there are bigger fears people name when they talk about AI. Deepfakes. Scams. Misinformation. Job loss. Power. Control. Those fears matter immensely. They absolutely deserve deep consideration.

Yet, I think the part that makes me most furious is the quiet erosion.

The part that keeps happening in the background while we’re distracted. Where we slowly lose the ability to trust what we’re seeing. Where sincerity becomes suspicious. The part where the internet fills up with scenes that look like life yet aren’t.

And I can feel myself grieving it.

I’ve been a tech geek since I was a kid. I love innovation. I love tools and parts of technology that help us build, connect, and create.

I love humanity more. The awkward, imperfect, unpolished parts of being real. The way a genuine moment has edges. I love the way an actual laugh sounds a little ugly sometimes, and the way real tenderness can’t be engineered on command.

This is one of the reasons I got off social media back in January. I could feel my brain start to warp. I could feel my attention get yanked around like a leash. I could feel myself becoming a smaller version of me.

And then I came back.

I came back because I told myself I needed it to grow my business. I needed visibility. I needed reach. I needed the algorithm to notice me. I came back because that’s what you’re told to do when you’re building something.

Show up. Post. Be consistent. Be catchy. Be palatable. Be shareable. Be a brand. Go viral.

So I tried.

And it isn’t even working.

It is discouraging. It is disappointing.

I have friends and family sending me reels by the minute, so I know they are on social media. I know the platforms are alive. I know the eyes are there.

So are they not seeing my posts? Or are they seeing them and moving on? Do my words simply lose to whatever shiny thing is next?

Sometimes I catch myself staring at my own work, like a middle schooler holding a flyer, hoping people will come.

Is it embarrassing? Yes.

Is it human? Also yes.

And then my mind does what minds do. It starts bargaining.

Maybe I need a hook.

Maybe I need a persona.

Maybe I need to be more aesthetic.

Maybe I need to post more.

Maybe I need to do the thing where you act a little unhinged so people share it.

And I keep coming back to the same truth.

None of that is me.

It feels like you have to have some kind of schtick to break through. Some little performative hook. Some version of yourself that’s easier to consume.

I don’t have that. And truthfully, I don’t want that. My work has never been about being loud. My work is about being authentic.

I write to speak for the people who can’t find the words. I create spaces to hold grief and trauma, death and dying. I sit with the sacred, strange, and deeply human parts of life that do not fit into a trending audio.

Everything is so loud.

And I cannot and do not want to try to break through that noise.

I want to build a life that my body can actually live inside. I want to feel human again. I want to remember what matters without needing a crisis to remind me.

And I won’t lie. I live in that unreal space, too. I use the tools and technology. I’m tangled in this world like everyone else. I’m also tired and tempted by numbing. I also sometimes choose the easy dopamine instead of the hard quiet.

I also know this:

I was a happier person for those months I was off social media. I felt it in my shoulders and in my jaw. I felt it in the way my thoughts came back slower, and clearer.

Everything in me wants to turn it all off. To sit here and write and trust that the right people will find me because something real traveled from one heart to another.

Some days, that feels like faith; other days, it feels like a delusion.

So I’ve been reconsidering my plan. Reconsidering my relationship to these platforms. Reconsidering how much of my time I am willing to feed into a machine that doesn’t give a damn about my nervous system. Or worse, a machine that profits off of my effed up nervous system.

I’ve been thinking about leaving social media again. No big announcement. Just me trying to get my time back.

Time I’ve been handing over to the endless guessing game of what the algorithm wants. Time spent making things I care about, then watching them sink without a ripple, while others are using AI to create 20 times more content with less value. Time spent consuming other people’s polished lives until my brain starts to feel like static.

I know I am not the only one feeling some kind of way about this. I know because the number of people with dysregulated nervous systems increases by the second, despite all the quick fixes being sold to you as you scroll. We live in a world that keeps turning the volume up, then asks why we can’t relax.

When disenchantment rolls in, the world offers the same exits. Numb out. Buy something. Scroll until you disappear. Binge-watch yourself into a blur. Turn it all into an argument in your head.

I’ve taken those exits. They always drop me off in the same place. Emptier.

And still, I don’t think disenchantment is only a dead end.

It can be information, a signal. It can be the moment you finally admit: I don’t like what this is doing to me.

It can be the day you stop calling your exhaustion a personal flaw and start calling it what it is. A normal response to an abnormal world.

That doesn’t solve the whole problem. I’m afraid this is a problem that won’t be solved in my lifetime. But it does tell the truth. And truth is a place to stand. So I keep coming back to one question.

What makes me feel more human?

Sometimes the answer is embarrassingly ordinary. A hot shower with the lights low. Cooking something with my hands. Texting a friend instead of liking their post. Sitting on the floor like my body wants to. Going to bed early without turning it into a moral debate. You know, the one where you keep looking at the clock and wondering if it is late enough to go to bed?

Sometimes the answer is harder. Turning off the noise and letting the emotions catch up. Saying no to the thing that gives me status and costs me my soul. Letting myself be bored long enough for my own thoughts to return.

If you, too, feel disenchanted right now, please know that you are not alone. You are sensing the truth. The unedited, non-AI-created truth.

Maybe disenchantment is your spirit trying to protect you from a life that keeps asking you to disappear.

So here’s a small ritual, if you want one. Nothing fancy.

Tonight, choose one tiny act of refusal.

Put your phone in another room for twenty minutes.

Turn off all the technology and pick up a book or a magazine, yep, they still make those.

Eat something without multitasking.

Stand outside and look up. Better yet, grab a blanket, lie in the grass, and find shapes in the clouds.

Ask yourself what you’ve been tolerating that your body has been begging you to stop calling normal.

Then do one small thing that belongs to the humane life.

Because the sacred, strange, and deeply human truth is this: a system that turns people into products will always feel like grief to someone who still wants to be real.

And I want real. Even here and now. Even in this messy, aching, beautiful thing we call life.

Love today,

Heather 🌸