It's time to quit scrolling.

The attention cartel has created the most lethal drug in human history. Chances are you're hooked onto it.

In just the past 20 years,

More than half of the human population, or 5.6 billion people, has been held hostage by a global cartel. This is a cartel that pits individuals against themselves, a cartel that destroys your ability to reason out of it, one that is part of a cycle headed towards societal collapse. Once you’re within the reach of the cartel, you’re on track to be consumed by it, to have your willpower and autonomy stripped away from you—handed on a silver platter to the thousands of executives that call the cartel’s shots. You don’t feel any different—in fact, you’re predisposed to play right into the hands of this cartel. You’ll believe that your life as a hostage is, in fact, the norm. This cartel is not made of gangs or guns, but of algorithms, incentives, and psychological warfare.

You’ll think you’re still in control, that you’re still playing your own game—even when reality couldn’t be more different. The result is that 6 out of 10 human beings alive right now, the most promising time the human species has ever seen, are becoming dopamine slaves, engaging in involuntary mental suicide, choosing to sell out their freedom, their souls, for an ever-decreasing slice of the gratification pie. These are the workings of the attention cartel.

---

If you’re reading this, chances are that you’re familiar with the attention cartel. A little too familiar. You interact with it in the form of other people. You find gratification in parasocial relationships, seeing a human on the other side of the screen that you can connect with. In fact, everyone does; this addiction is the result of our own evolutionary predispositions that have suited us so well for nearly 100% of human history. You see people daily who have the same interests as you, people who create content that drives positive engaging emotions. You scroll past hundreds of them a day, each one delivering a critical overdose of hormones and impulses that you don’t act on.

Instead, you just keep scrolling and scrolling past the pixels on the screen, driving your emotional intelligence into a bottomless pit. The attention cartel has spent billions finding out the best ways to take over your evolutionary biology, to infiltrate your system and turn it against itself. They’ve adapted so quickly and so lethally that in just 2 decades, well over half of the world’s population is in their hands. On the evolutionary level, you will never adapt. That’s what they’re taking advantage of.

---

The attention cartel isn’t much different from what you’d expect from crack-smuggling crime syndicates that constitute the traditional interpretation of cartels for most of us. They distribute mass quantities of drugs, stimulants that are being consumed en masse by those under their control. They’ve subverted and circumvented our evolutionary guardrails—social behaviors that once led to our ability to dominate as a species now become Gen Z’s kryptonite.

Social media and networking-based platforms lead to brain circuitry alterations that are associated with reductions in gray matter volume in regions tied to reward and self-control, providing surges of dopamine in a mechanical addiction cycle. The baseline dopamine surge from social media and video gaming lies around 150-200% above natural dopamine levels. Perhaps unfortunately, the increase caused by alcohol and nicotine lies only between 200-220%. A drug like cocaine leads to 350% of ordinary dopamine levels being achieved. Scrolling shorts or reels will trigger dopamine outbreaks with intensities almost matching that of drinking, smoking, or vaping. Billions of people worldwide are doing this for hours every day, taking hundreds of shots of this stimulant, overdosing themselves beyond belief.

Science speaks for itself—there’s a striking similarity that’s found between media addiction and addiction to traditional stimulants. In both cases, usage leads to pleasure-seeking and the rewiring of reward systems, a build-up of tolerance for the drug, and lastly a collection of withdrawal symptoms that trigger once you stop receiving the stimulation. People don’t just grind, stream, watch, or scroll because it feels good—once you’re hooked, it becomes a coping mechanism. Early exposure drives the positive reinforcement cycle, but once you’re taken hostage by the attention cartel, you drug yourself not to feel good, but to avoid feeling bad. Dysfunction develops in the prefrontal–limbic circuit; self-control, decision making, and emotional regulation all become severely impaired. Even when you’ve finished your slice of the dopamine pie, even when there is no enjoyment offered, you’re still addicted. The cartel adapts to your behaviors, giving you exactly what’s needed—not to feel pleasure or happiness, but to reinforce your stages of addiction.

Greater usage of the drug directly correlates with mental health issues. Addiction directly leads to mental illnesses such as depression, chronic anxiety, obsessive compulsive behaviors, and triggers ADHD-like symptoms. And just like consumption of marijuana or nicotine, social media is a gateway drug, creating a propensity towards alcohol abuse. Constant overdose modifies your cognitive behaviors, creating a version of you that exhibits conscientiousness agreeableness, neuroticism, and narcissism. Reduced gray matter volumes in the nucleus accumbens, amygdala, and the insula are the result of constant abuse and overdosage. Exposure destroys your sleep schedule, increasing sleeping latency and decreasing sleep quality. It’s now a global addiction.

---

You see people hooked onto the drug everywhere—at school, at work, at home, in the streets, and everywhere else you go. You’re inclined to take the drug because they’re doing it, to socialize with others under the influence. Even when you’re scrolling alone, you don’t feel like you’re being trapped by the attention cartel. You feel like you’re interacting with other humans behind the screen. In fact, those creators you look up to aren’t your parasocial connections or friends. They are involuntarily subservient to the attention cartel; they are what allows the cartel to thrive.

What’s different between you and them is that they’re the beneficiaries of this global drug epidemic, and you’re the price they’re willing to pay to achieve success. They not only distribute and sugarcoat the drug, but their behavior also encourages users like you to do the same, exponentially increasing the number of individuals addicted. They inspire billions to follow in their footsteps, converting addicts to distributors in a cycle that increases the number of people addicted by orders of magnitude. Without even realizing it, they’ve become the drug dealers, and you’ve become their loyal customers.

With the development of the internet, the deadliest and most potent drugs are no longer physical. Their workings occur in the abstract, in cyberspace, and they’re so good at their job that users don’t even feel like they’re taking a drug in the first place. The traditional constraints of drugs like heroin and methamphetamine have been bypassed. When you create a digital superdrug, the cost to synthesize it for a single addict is the same as the cost of synthesizing it for a billion. No evolutionary guardrail could’ve prevented exploitation in a realm this abstract. No one involved in this global drug epidemic realizes they’re part of it, no one except for the few who design the algorithms from the shadows, those who synthesize the most addictive forms of this drug to trap the most people possible.

5.6 billion people are actively fueling their own collapse, actively selling out their souls for cheap dopamine. They’ve paid with their freedom, their time, their potential, and ultimately their ability to lead a fulfilling life. It all comes at a cost. Once addicted, you are no longer in control of yourself—the attention cartel is. And it’s likely that most of you reading this article, just like me, have made the decision to sell out without even knowing it.

Before you click off, I’m going to remind you that you have a choice.

You can either continue to delude yourself into thinking you’re still playing your own game, that you’re not being held hostage, and continue to rationalize the selling out of your soul to a multitrillion-dollar cartel.

Or you can decide to break free. You can click off. It feels so simple, it feels like your choice, and you can make that choice starting now. You can reclaim your freedom. You can reclaim your potential, you can break free from the chains of addiction and delusion. And there is no middle ground. You can feel like compromising with the cartel, bargaining with them to still drug yourself while maintaining your freedom.

You can be willing to compromise, but the attention cartel isn’t. It’s by design that they take advantage of your longing to have the best of both worlds, and they know this. The system is designed to make moderation impossible. When you try to settle for both freedom and addiction, addiction wins over every single time. Complacency is complicity. The best time to act would’ve been years ago, but that time is long gone. The second-best time to act is now.

Are you willing to be held hostage eternally by the attention cartel, or are you going to take back what’s yours?

Thank you for reading. Take care. And remember that you can click off right now.

Notes (i think)

Weinstein, A. (2023). Problematic social networking site use: Effects on mental health and the brain. Frontiers in Psychiatry, 14, 1108403. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyt.2023.1108403

He, Q., Turel, O., & Bechara, A. (2017). Brain anatomy alterations associated with social networking site addiction. Scientific Reports, 7, 45064. https://doi.org/10.1038/srep45064

Turel, O., He, Q., Xue, G., Xiao, L., & Bechara, A. (2014). Examination of neural systems sub-serving Facebook “addiction.” Psychological Reports, 115(3), 675–695. https://doi.org/10.2466/18.PR0.115c31z8

Wadsley, M., & Ihssen, N. (2023). A systematic review of structural and functional MRI studies investigating social networking site use. Brain Sciences, 13(7), 1079. https://doi.org/10.3390/brainsci13071079

Dong, G., Lin, X., Zhou, H., & Lu, Q. (2014). Cognitive flexibility in internet addicts: fMRI evidence from difficult-to-easy and easy-to-difficult switching situations. Addictive Behaviors, 39(3), 677–683. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.addbeh.2013.11.028

Brand, M., Young, K. S., Laier, C., Wölfling, K., & Potenza, M. N. (2016). Integrating psychological and neurobiological considerations regarding the development and maintenance of specific internet-use disorders. Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews, 71, 252–266. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neubiorev.2016.08.033