Sam Kriss wrote a fantastic essay on streaming platforms and zombies. Don't ask me how he managed to combine those topics, and go read it. It's… special. His basic thesis is powerful: We no longer consume algorithmically-sorted content, we consume the sorting algorithm itself. At first I thought, “What the hell is he talking about,” and then I thought, “yeah, he’s definitely right.” I found the simplest example that verifies Kriss’s hypothesis: We don't say, “What are you watching on TikTok.” We use the verb scrolling. Why? Because the watching part is not relevant. Any video itself is only interesting insofar as it belongs in the middle of an infinite chain. Your brain doesn’t yearn for you to consume content but for you to scroll past content; the real reason why you scroll TikTok is that your brain wants to consume the liminal space between videos. The highest high is not at the beginning of a video, not even the end—when have you last watched an entire 60-second clip?—but the moment your finger presses the screen and the current video is gone forever from the top end of your phone while the next is emerging from the bottom. It is at that moment, almost so quick that you don’t notice, that you see the infinite chain—the frame of a video that’s connected to the frame of the next. That is what your brain feeds on. Haven’t you noticed that whatever you're watching at any given moment in an algorithmic feed is the least interesting thing ever? The instant it begins, your brain immediately begs you to scroll. It wants the high from randomized rewards; will the next video be good or not? But it doesn't want to know the answer, just a reason to ask the question. Don’t get me wrong, I say TikTok, but the entire digital culture is like this. Kriss, for instance, focuses on Twitch and streaming services, but it’s everywhere. The “current thing”—whatever is driving the cultural conversation for the chronically online at any given moment—also plays the role of placeholder for the feeling of the existence of a “next thing.” It’s not the reality of a current thing but the promise of a next thing that we so eagerly seek. Yes, we are that sick. For instance, the current meme is only interesting insofar as it's the one that precedes the next meme in the infinite chain that is the meme cycle. It’s also why AI video content works so damn well and why I believe it is the ultimate form of social media platforms: endless chains of AI slop, preferably video. AI slop doesn't even try to convince you like TikTok videos made by humans; “hey, care about me, I'm also important.” AI slop is pure placeholder essence. Its ridiculous success entails the subconscious acceptance that, in a world of digital abundance and perpetual change, things only matter insofar as they embody prior-ness. No pretense of self whatsoever. No pretense of meaning. No pretense that watching matters, only scrolling. AI slop videos are the perfect appetizer for a generation of zombies that, having been conditioned by the sorting algorithm, have ended up like Pavlov's dog, salivating at the ring of the bell.