This one made it into the book. I wrote it in 2012, though the kernel of it came from a dream that felt like it was from much earlier — 2005 or so, the era of early social media, when the internet was still being sold as liberation rather than infrastructure. It aged strangely. Which is to say it aged accurately.
The essay starts with a dream. Someone powerful told me: “You stick to the internet.” I woke up knowing it was important and not quite sure what it meant. That’s not unusual. Dreams speak in compression — they give you the conclusion and leave you to reconstruct the argument. The argument, as I eventually understood it, was about the singularity, about the moment machine intelligence exceeds human intelligence, and about what survival looks like on the other side of that threshold.
But that’s the frame. The actual content is about what the internet does to people who use it as their primary reality. The early internet promised global connection, democratized information, the end of gatekeeping. What we got instead was a medium perfectly engineered for attention harvesting. Platforms designed to be maximally sticky — not in the sense of interesting, but in the sense that flies get stuck on paper. You stick to the internet. It wasn’t a warning against technology. It was a description of a trap.
I’d been living outside America for years by then, moving between places where the internet was a tool rather than an environment. From that vantage point, you could watch Americans — particularly younger ones — becoming genuinely confused about where physical reality ended and mediated reality began. The blurring wasn’t accidental. It was the product.
The essay asks what it costs to live primarily in a space designed by people who profit from your engagement. The answer hasn’t gotten more optimistic since 2012.
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*This piece was expanded and collected in [Not My America: A Stranger in a Strange Land](https://www.amazon.com/Not-My-America-Stranger-Strange-ebook/dp/B0G3C44X7D/) — essays about America observed from the outside, by someone who left and couldn’t quite believe what he found when he looked back. Available in Kindle and paperback.*
**[Get Not My America on Amazon →](https://www.amazon.com/Not-My-America-Stranger-Strange-ebook/dp/B0G3C44X7D/)**
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**You might also like:** [The Last Vagobond Post](https://www.vagobond.com/the-last-vagobond-post/), [Future World 2323 – It’s Darker and Stranger Than You Think](https://www.vagobond.com/future-world-2323-its-darker-and-stranger-than-you-think/), [A Bibliography of CD Damitio](https://www.vagobond.com/a-bibliography-of-cd-damitio/)
*Browse the full CD Damitio catalog at [indignified.com/books](https://indignified.com/books)*
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My books don’t fit in any neat box — because they’re about people who feel something huge is missing… and actually go look for it. Some even find it.
Dive into the full catalog and see which story hits you hardest. CD Damitio on Amazon.
CD Damitio writes at indignified.substack.com — essays on utopias, dystopias, and the spaces between. Free to read. No algorithm, no sponsored content. His books can be found on Amazon at https://www.amazon.com/stores/CD-Damitio/author/B001JP7NWA
CD Damitio writes INDIGNIFIED — utopias and dystopias explored. Free to read.
