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B. Sandoval | 1/6/2026

What will we do when everything in our life is edited down to just the mere nano-seconds of our existence deemed worthy of our digital archives?

Oh, right. It’s already happened.

And yet, here’s an interesting paradox: while our actual lives are edited down to the tiniest of moments in our camera rolls and in our memories, we routinely consume the mundane moments of other people’s lives via social media – watching them as they cook, their phones propped up on a pot just a few feet away. What we forget to imagine is how this content creator had to press “record” and before getting into position, a behind-the-scenes moment carefully snipped out of the finished product.

The relaxed moment we see on our screens shows none of the prep, the obsession over posture and wardrobe and angles and lighting and facial expression. The clip before us appears as if it were almost a candid shot, with the subject staring wistfully down at the food she prepares. Playing the role of a dreamy chef in her own kitchen, she stands there, stirring away, as if it’s just another ordinary Tuesday night.

And then, predictably, a new dream emerges from the fantastical corners of her brain: one day, she could be famous! Famous for sharing dozens of recipes! Venerated, she could be, for her incredible library of luscious meals, all gluten-free and crunchy-approved. And then, somewhere in the fabulous future, she’ll chuckle at how it all started so haphazardly, almost by accident. She’ll say she just shared a recipe one day, and it went viral. And it changed her whole life.

That won’t be accurate, of course, because the truth will lie in what she won’t share. What she won’t share in this fantastical future is how many hours she spent locked in the bathroom, hunched over the porcelain throne, jabbing at the black screen of her phone to edit her videos.

With the toilet also serving as her editing chair, she routinely sequestered herself behind that locked door, safe from the peering eyes of her family members. She won’t share how the editing process always took exponential amounts of time, way more than she expected.

What she won’t share is the less romantic version of this story – one where our now-famous influencer-chef heroine experiences intense mood swings and loses hours of personal time to scrolling through video after video of other chefs to find the perfect “trending audio” for her next post.

This one will go viral, for sure. Right? But no. It doesn’t. And when it doesn’t, she loses sanity and sleep to the ever-present and ever-influential algorithm that now controls her every moment, both conscious and unconscious.

The breaking point won’t even come when she starts having nightmares. Or when she starts living in constant fear of her personal life getting torn apart by hackers threatening to take over her account and ruin her reputation with inappropriate posts. She won’t even wake up to the insanity of her current digital reality when her actual reality, filled with baby cheeks and sunshine and butterflies, passes her by in an instant, never to return again.

She’ll make her way to 100k followers. One toilet-seat session after another, she’ll get there. She’ll be sure to engage with her followers – to let them know she appreciates them. Meanwhile, her children are growing up outside the bathroom door. They’re crawling, then toddling. And eventually, they’re walking. Knocking. Calling for her. But she doesn’t answer because she’s busy responding to comments. She’s posting to her stories. She says she’s just going to make ONE more edit. Just… one… more.

But one more will never be enough. One more follower, one more post. When she hits a million, she’ll cry tears of joy. She’ll post a cute photo of shiny metallic balloons and she’ll blow out a candle, salty tears streaming down from her eyes.

But when that photo op is over and all the well-wishes and encouraging comments have been read, she’ll want more.

And no matter what she does, it will never feel like enough.

Inside her skull, neural pathways have been forged. Like ruts in a road, they’ve been carved out by the hits of dopamine delivered to her system with each “like,” comment, and new follower. Her social media account is just one of a gigantic, ever-expanding network of accounts, all systematically working to dumb humanity down, whether intentionally or not, until we’re a mere shadow of what we once were.

The attention span of humans is astonishingly low in 2026, despite the strides we’ve made in intellectual ingenuity and educational expansion over the last few thousand years.

And it all causes one to wonder: do the media overlords intend to perpetuate brain rot in the global community? Or do they really mean well? Has this whole social media experiment been a good idea that has simply gotten out of hand? Or was it meant to destroy our lives from the beginning?

Our influencer-chef bestie may not figure it out until her entire life is laid waste by her obsession.

Sure, what happens on social media seems fun – it’s all just good people trying to share what they’re passionate about, right? Back in 2012, that might have been true. But that was before the highly sophisticated algorithm we know today.

We used to laugh at our parents’ generation for telling us Facebook was “dangerous.” We all wanted to be the cool kids. Back then, social media was scary enough. Now? It’s on a whole different level.

Where do we go from here?