Reality is melting.
Not loudly. Not instantly.
Just one AI-generated pixel at a time.

Nesrine Malik nails it: we are drowning in AI slop—a grotesque soup of fake images, fantasy nostalgia, and algorithmic propaganda, engineered not to inform but to engorge. Political deepfakes. Tradwife pinups. Studio apartments as spiritual balm. Gaza as background noise. Every swipe is a step deeper into the uncanny valley, and no one’s throwing us a rope.

The tragedy isn’t that we can’t tell what’s real.
It’s that it no longer matters.

A cutesy AI-rendered cottage and a burning building in Rafah now occupy the same square inch of screen. Both frictionless. Both endlessly scrollable. And when everything feels aestheticized — even the horror — urgency dies. Empathy decays. Action turns into... share. Like. Shrug.

This isn’t just the internet getting weirder.
This is propaganda without a sender.
And sedation without a syringe.

“We’re not being lied to. We’re being lulled.”
“You’re not doomscrolling. You’re in an algorithmic lullaby.”

If you think deeply about it, the effect is even more sinister.
Because this isn’t just content — it’s context collapse.

We navigate our lives by cues: emotional weight, social signals, visual coherence. But now? The same AI that paints tradwife fever dreams also simulates war crimes, political martyrdom, and clickbait “cozy core.” We can no longer assign meaning — because every image is untethered, every share suspect, every feeling flattened by exposure therapy in fast-forward.

And when the ledger between signal and noise breaks?
We go numb.
We distrust our instincts.
We ghost our own emotions.

We say things like “I don’t know what’s real anymore” — not as a revelation, but as a coping mechanism. Because reality isn’t just being distorted. It’s being outcompeted by cheaper, faster, sexier hallucinations.

And the worst part?
We’re not the audience.
We’re the input.

Your gaze is data. Your click is fuel. Your attention is the product being harvested and recycled into the next round of slop. The machine doesn't care if you're informed, enraged, or soothed — only that you're still scrolling.

So what happens when our collective feed turns into a slow-motion lobotomy?
Nothing.
That’s the point.

When fascism returns, it may not wear jackboots.
It may arrive as a lo-fi Instagram reel with lo-fi beats.
Nostalgic. Calming. Sharable.
And it will thank you for your engagement.

The crisis isn’t that we don’t see the fire.
It’s that we’re watching it burn in Studio Ghibli style —
and mistaking that for warmth.