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Autonomous Units: How the System Manipulates Us into Choosing Loneliness
“…projects which are intended to cohere individuals into autonomous units in hygienic small apartments only subject them more completely to the control of capital.”
— Theodor W. Adorno & Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment (1947)
I catch myself sitting in the dark and dully scrolling through the TikTok feed, my face illuminated only by the cold blue light of the screen. Video after video, the algorithm splashes at me the exact same aggressive, endless stream: “10 signs of an emotionally immature man,” “How to play a guy so that he pays for everything,” “All men are covert narcissists,” “How to recognize an abuser.” In the adjacent algorithm, men at this very second are fed with exactly the same poison: “All women are materialistic, manipulative, want only to take your money and lock you down.”
I throw the phone onto the bed and just look at the ceiling. My God, how I am sick of all this.
Honestly, how can you not see what is happening right before your eyes? Over the last 5–10 years, an entire generation has undergone a flawless, surgical lobotomy. We have been systematically conditioned through these screens to look at one another not with love, but through the crosshairs of suspicion and deep-seated paranoia.
