Invisible Networks #5: Life Imitates Feed

The rattling of the subway car against your back doesn't do much to sharpen your consciousness to proper wakefulness, it's always like this when lowered coffee rationing catches you off guard. The world only begins to feel slightly less lethargic when you feel the building familiar rush. Your post of coffee woes must be gaining some traction, since the dopamine injectors seem to be working. It's a small dose, so you can surmise that it's only a few dozen likes. It leaves you with a faint longing for more when the rush subsides, but now your commute will be more tolerable.

Feeling better, you finally take notice of the other passengers. Your ocular overlay shows their most recent posts, but nothing grabs your interest or even tickles a chuckle out of you. Why bother activating that thumbs-up icon to make their brain implant do some actual work when they surely won't return the favor?

One person catches your eye, though. He's built quite a collection of stress lines and his hair is starting to gray in spots, but you've seen this sort of thing often enough that you know that he's probably in his mid twenties. Poor kid must have gone viral at least a dozen times, and is deep in his current withdrawal. Your overlay shows that he consistently gets likes in the upper hundreds, sometimes the low thousands. You'd be jealous but you know he likely can't even feel the orgasmic rush of fifty thousand likes in a half-hour span. You sort his post history by popularity to confirm your suspicions. Yep, his top posts land around thirty million, and the analytics show that for each of those most of the engagement happened over the course of a couple hours. Definitely burned out enough of his dopamine receptors to make him a Dream Chaser, ruined by his five minutes of fame.

You turn your gaze away, it's a pitiful sight that you can't do anything to help. Your own donation of likes wouldn't even trip a single brain cell in him, and you've heard of acts of kindness towards Dream Chasers running the risk of getting caught in their tides of clout. The most recent implant firmware lowered the maximum dope output that heavy engagement can provide, but you still hear rumors of people burning out on the latest versions. There's also those spine-chilling tales of people who've hacked out the limiters in their implants, using proximity connections to spread the override to others out of a misguided benevolence.

Suddenly the world seems to become more detailed, more vibrant, more joyous. You've never felt this good, and it doesn't seem to be stopping. Checking your notifications you see that the Dream Chaser you were trying not to stare at shared one of your old posts, which has already shot up to one hundred thousand likes. You can't help but match his smile. He chuckles, which has a peculiar infectious quality that makes you laugh. The rational part of you is drowning in dopamine, trying to get the rest of your brain to clue in to the horror of what this intensity of happiness will do to you in the long run.

But all you can do is laugh.