Facebook, Bigfoot, and the Digital Swamp of the Reptilian Mind

When I was a child, going to the grocery store with my mother was a mundane errand—until we reached the checkout line. There, stacked beside the gum and glossy TV guides, was a fever swamp in newsprint: tabloids. They screamed in all-caps about alien babies, Bigfoot sightings in Milwaukee, swamp druids kidnapping hikers, and celebrities melting in real-time under the cruel lens of long-range zoom. I remember wincing. Even at that age, I sensed these were not harmless distractions but invitations to devolve—open doors to the primitive brainstem, the part Phil Stutz calls the “lower channel,” where we stop being people and start becoming lizards with opposable thumbs and credit cards.

What I didn’t realize then was that these headlines—designed to hijack the amygdala and pump cortisol like candy—were just the analog prototype. The final form? Facebook. Facebook is the digital version of that tabloid aisle, now algorithmically juiced and weaponized to deliver an intravenous drip of the grotesque. My feed, once a sleepy scroll through family birthdays and vacation humblebrags, has transformed into a daily assault of schadenfreude, scandal, and shameless clickbait. Like a bored demon trying to stir chaos in the marketplace of thought, Facebook now mimics TikTok in its race to grab you by the reptilian brain and shake.

I stay on Facebook for one reason: radios. I’m a radio hobbyist (listen to FM mostly) and belong to a clutch of charmingly niche radio groups where grown adults argue about antenna angles and trade photos of 1980s Japanese receivers like they’re Monet originals. I also use it to message my wife. But every time I log on, I feel like a sober man walking into a dive bar filled with uncouth drunks swinging pool cues at shadows.

Facebook isn’t just a swamp. It’s a bubbling cauldron of cultural sludge, stirred hourly by algorithms that mistake engagement for intelligence and outrage for insight. It’s a symptom of our collective cognitive degradation—and a primary contributor. It’s an empire built on the backs of half-truths, low-resolution thinking, and viral tantrums. And yet, here I am—wading in, knee-deep, every time I want to tell someone about a new DSP radio chip or the joy of a clean AM signal at midnight.

This is the curse of the modern enthusiast: to live in a digital kingdom that is both a community center and a cognitive landfill. I stay for the signal, but God help me, I’m choking on the noise.