With your Cheeto-dusted fingers gripping your phone, you shift your weight to the other side of the bed. You scroll past two TikToks; you have not left your bed since your last meal. When was that? 

Your stomach rumbles as you sigh and open the DoorDash app. It goes blank for a second—as if blinking—and then shows you an ad. You groan and roll your eyes.

 A female AI-generated voice speaks:

Hello! Are you un*mpl*yed? Do you ever find yourself wanting a j*b? Do you ever find yourself grappling with the horrors of j*b appl*c*tions? Of course you do! This ad is for you!

Suddenly, the image splits in two. The bottom half is replaced by a video game being played—Subway Surfers—while the top half continues the ad. Being the primary ruler of your rot-filled mind, your goldfish-like attention span is immediately entranced by the bright colors and animated movement.

The voice resumes:

From your daily, hourly, minute-by-minute experience scrolling on social media, you are, of course, very familiar with influencers! People who are paid to appear constantly on social media saturate your feed doing dumb things for views, participating in the latest viral trends to become the next big thing. By determining what to promote to their audiences, they play a big role in shaping our culture. Most of their audience consists of adolescents and un*mpl*yed people, so keep this in mind.

The information whizzes past your head. Your eyes focus on the Subway Surfers game, your pupils dilating with the pulse of the character’s movements. What was the AI lady saying? You don’t quite know, but the words “paid” and “social media” stand out like shiny tokens. Being paid sounds nice. Maybe you can finally be of use for once. Hasn’t your mom always told you to go out and face the real world? Something about being a contributing member of society? Is this what she meant? 

Growing larger, the Subway Surfers screen now takes up about three-quarters of your phone. Your eyes remain immersed on the screen, but your mind has long turned to mush. Your stomach rumbles, and you realize you haven’t eaten in days. You try to close the app to open DoorDash, but you remember that you already have DoorDash open.

The ad continues:

As an influencer, you automatically achieve fame and wealth just by going viral. And don’t worry! Some influencers will have you believing that going viral is difficult. They are lying! They just don’t want you to take a slice of their pie. 

The process couldn’t be simpler—to start, just film yourself doing something cringe! What counts as cringe, you ask? Well! It’s all around you, pulsing at your fingertips, simply waiting. One influencer gained millions of views from screaming about various internet memes at random people in his college dorm. That doesn’t sound too hard, does it? 

You groan and turn to the side, sprawled out like an eagle in flight. The words turn to gibberish around you. Your brain must have been dead before the video even started. Why were you even listening to this? You can’t quite remember, but you feel hungry. What was the ad saying? Something about getting money. That sounded nice. You wish life were as easy as that. A pile of job applications gathers dust under your bed, long forgotten.

The AI voice jolts you back, prompting you to look at your phone again:

All of this may sound too good to be true. But don’t worry, it’s not! Don’t you want a fast, easy, and convenient way to make money?

Money. You don't need it now; your parents’ basement provides everything you need. But even you understand that one day, you won’t be able to rely on your parents anymore. Maybe the ad is worth listening to.

Influencing can also be very beneficial to the body and health. You’ll start to fit into your middle school clothes again as you try to conform to harsh beauty standards. You won’t even have time to eat with all the filming you’ll be doing!

You hadn’t given it much thought before, but the flab on your stomach bothers you. You haven’t looked in a mirror in at least a month. You pause the ad, your bed creaking in defiance as you roll out. Waddling to the bathroom makes you feel like a rusty machine; your legs have forgotten how to move. You pause in front of the mirror, shocked, but at the same time, not shocked. You look like something that just crawled out of the sewer. Greasy matted hair, yellowing teeth, crumbs of old food crawling over your mouth—your appearance speaks volumes. You wobble back to your bed, not caring enough to do anything.

Your stomach rumbles again, reminding you of your goal. You pick up your phone and start watching the ad again.

Plus, your small and dense brain will never have to formulate a single thought again! All you have to do is copy the bigger influencers, and the views will come by themselves. But what if you’re an ambitious influencer, you ask, shouldn’t you do some thinking to generate more original content? To stand out? No worries! An AI bot like me can do all of that hard work for you. Isn’t it amazing that we live in a world where technology can do more than a human brain?

You consider the question—that was true. You pause, your fingers lingering over the phone screen. And then you decide to give it a try. After all, the video didn’t mention any downsides, did it? You pick up your phone and enter a prompt into ChatGPT.

“what r sum ideas 4 a tiktok”

While you do this, your attention turned away, you don’t see that the ad ends with a warning—a list of what seems to be a set of problems: eating disorders, mental health issues, not earning a stable income, and on and on. Though some would’ve stopped immediately, you don’t. The warning was there, but you were not privy to it. At least that is what you will say years from now, at expensive therapy you can barely afford to pay for. Maybe, just maybe, if you had just focused on your hunger a little more, if you had ignored that ad, you would’ve chosen a different way…gone to college, got a steady job, but probably not. Let’s be honest—not in the Age of Influencers.