Instagram is not a social network; it is an infrastructure for deglutition. The algorithm operates like an invisible jaw, processing the tissue of reality into a highly digestible pixelated mash. We do not seek images; we are processed by them in a mechanism of saturation that nullifies any possibility of contemplation.
It is a mechanical escape where the gaze slides without friction, performing a surgical etching of vacuity upon our retina. Gluttony here is not gastric, it is ocular: a compulsion to devour an infinite biological record that never manages to satiate the hunger. There is a distorted reflection in the metal frame of the monitor that seems to warp my own face.
I feel a rhythmic sting in the flexor muscle of my index finger—a pulsing inertia urging me to slide over a surface that does not exist while I try to capture the pulse of this fatigue. The air in the mineral enclosure smells of old walls—a trace of crumbled lime filtering through the flesh-bound tissue of my clothes and sticking to my skin like a film of dust.
The Algorithmic Mesh: Flesh in Visual Saturation
The algorithm functions through a clinical hallucination: it makes us believe we are choosing while it performs an autopsy of our somatic weaknesses. Every scroll is a direct stimulus feeding a biological record of preferences—an invisible suture binding our nervous support to the flesh machine of global marketing.
Visual saturation produces a fatigue of attention that turns us into passive organisms, trapped in a pulsing inertia of consumption where the tissue of beauty becomes indistinguishable from the tissue of advertising. It is the victory of the mechanism over the will. Mental health is that shiny varnish we apply over a structure eaten away by dampness.
A vacant smile while the pulse quickens in front of a screen that returns nothing. I feel an electrical hum in the optic nerve—a vibration that seems to be born behind the eyeballs. There is a damp stain on the ceiling—a slow inscription of decay. I notice my jaw is clenched—a tension of tissue reminding me that my anatomy is reacting to a threat it cannot see.
The Inertia of the Gaze: The Archive of Nothingness
What remains of the gaze when the mechanism of gluttony has finished chewing? A registration of fatigue remains. Instagram has transformed vision into a mechanical escape toward the void, where the saturation of the image nullifies the pulse of real experience.
We are merely flesh-bound tissue processing a collective hallucination—an archive of captured moments that no one will remember because they were designed to be devoured and forgotten. It is the surgical etching of oblivion at the very center of visual memory. There is no exit ritual for this banquet of shadows.
The mechanism continues to feed the retina, emitting a stimulus that only produces a bitter saturation. We are trapped in this inertia, in this loop of registration that stops only when the organism collapses under the weight of its own vacuity, leaving behind a frayed social tissue and a smell of slaked lime that does not fade.
I have to move my neck I am not moving it I should I don’t feel the support of my heels on the floor the smell of old wall invades the epiglottis I should…
