Cinemorphosis

Category: technology

  • The Disappearing Novel and the Culture That Forgot How to Read

    The Disappearing Novel and the Culture That Forgot How to Read

    In his New York Times column “When Novels Mattered,” David Brooks laments the slow vanishing of the novelist as a public figure. Once, the release of a new novel—especially by the likes of Saul Bellow or Toni Morrison—was a cultural event. Now it barely causes a ripple.

    The novel no longer commands attention. The digital age has crushed the reader’s patience, fractured our attention span, and flooded our minds with the shallow stimuli of TikTok, endless texts, and algorithmic rabbit holes. Where once we waited for a new Roth novel with the same anticipation reserved today for a Marvel sequel, we now swipe past literature as if it were spam.

    For Brooks, this is not just a loss—it’s a tragedy. The decline of the novel signals something deeper: a society losing its capacity for moral complexity, nuance, and emotional depth. The great literary writers, he argues, once served as our secular prophets, our social conscience. They told the truth—harsh, beautiful, layered. They gave us characters who were flawed, human, and real—not two-dimensional avatars chasing dopamine hits on social media.

    One of Brooks’ most compelling insights is that this decline is not simply the result of technological distraction, but of cultural timidity. Great literature, he reminds us, requires audacity. The ability to speak outside the safe lanes. To challenge the dominant orthodoxy. And today, particularly among the liberal elite, that audacity is wilting. Brooks argues that young people, especially on college campuses, whisper their opinions in fear. The social cost of independent thinking has grown too high.

    Interestingly, Brooks—who has recently skewered the excesses of the political right—spares them from scrutiny here. His focus is firmly on the left, on the performative virtue and self-censorship that, while well-meaning, suffocates creative risk. In this climate, it’s easier to be righteous than original. Virtue signaling may win you applause online, but it doesn’t lead to great art.

    Yet the most persuasive moment in the essay arrives late, when Brooks describes the collective psychic damage of the last decade. “Our interior lives,” he writes, “are being battered by the shock waves of public events. There has been a comprehensive loss of faith.” That line lands hard. It names something many of us feel: that we are living in a Bosch-like hellscape of noise, cruelty, and absurdity—a fever dream of moral exhaustion.

    Brooks doesn’t say this, but I will: perhaps literature isn’t dead, just stunned. In shock. In digestion. Maybe we can’t write the great novels of this era because we haven’t fully metabolized the era itself. The story hasn’t ended, and we’re still trying to make sense of the firestorm.

    Is the novel dead? I doubt it. It’s sleeping off the chaos. There are still serious novelists out there—unhyped, uncelebrated—doing the slow, unsexy work. One who deserves more recognition is Sigrid Nunez, whose clear, intimate prose hits as hard as anything in Bellow’s canon.

    The talent remains. The novels are still being written. What’s missing is the cultural infrastructure that once elevated them to necessity. We don’t need more influencers—we need readers with stamina. We need a culture willing to wrestle with meaning again.

  • Trader Joe’s and the End of the World (One Tofu Block at a Time)

    Trader Joe’s and the End of the World (One Tofu Block at a Time)

    With my wife and twin daughters making the long drive home from San Francisco, I realized someone had to restock the household pantry. That someone was me. So by 8 a.m., I was wandering the fluorescent aisles of Trader Joe’s, still half-asleep, in search of tempeh, oat milk, and maybe a reason to keep going.

    Twenty seconds in, I spotted Eliot—a jazz musician in his early forties who’s worked there forever and knows every spice rack and frozen entrée by memory. I hadn’t seen him in a while. He asked if I’d retired from teaching at the local college yet.

    “Two more years,” I said, adding, “but who knows what’s happening to writing classes in the Age of ChatGPT. Everyone talks like they know. They don’t.”

    He asked how I’m handling it in the classroom.

    “I’m not sure I am,” I told him. “I can teach. I can perform. I can entertain. But grading online essays? That’s an existential crisis wrapped in a PDF. I’m dancing in quicksand.”

    Eliot nodded grimly. “This generation doesn’t read.”

    “My daughters don’t,” I said. “Their friends don’t. They’re sweet kids, empathetic and funny, but they don’t seem built for a world that requires deadlines, grit, or employment.”

    Eliot, without hesitation: “We’re screwed.”

    “And there’s no going back,” I said. “CNN gets out-watched by Joe Rogan. Most people get their facts from guys yelling into ring lights while drinking protein shakes.”

    We stared into the epistemic abyss together, nodded, and parted ways before we started crying in the chip aisle.

    Twenty minutes later, I made it to the checkout line, where I was greeted by Megan—the tall, soft-spoken vegan cashier who’s known me for years. She had just broken up with her boyfriend and noticed the mountain of super-firm tofu in my cart.

    We exchanged tofu recipes, talked about the protein digestibility scale, and mourned the impossibility of plant-based love in a society fueled by backyard barbecue. Her breakup, as it turns out, was partly due to meat incompatibility. “He grilled like it was a belief system,” she said.

    We also touched—briefly—on factory farming, which always makes me want to cry or scream or stop eating altogether. But just like I couldn’t solve the collapse of literacy and truth with Eliot, I couldn’t solve the meat-industrial complex with Megan.

    All I could do was pay for my groceries and accept the fact that I’m a limited man in a crumbling culture, armed with tofu, oat milk, and a Costco-sized tub of almond butter.

    I loaded the trunk with the small consolation that I had, at the very least, fed my family.

  • Posting Ennui and the Rise of Podcast Land

    Posting Ennui and the Rise of Podcast Land

    It’s a small miracle that Kyle Chayka’s New Yorker piece, “Are You Experiencing Posting Ennui?”, wasn’t published five years ago. The argument feels overdue—like an obituary written long after the corpse started to stink. Chayka observes what most of us have already felt in our scrolling bones: the golden era of amateur posting—your breakfast photo, your blurry concert shot, your moody-filtered selfie—has gone the way of the lava lamp and the Livestrong bracelet. What was once dubbed “valorized amateurism” now reads like cringe-inducing narcissism.

    In its place, we have the glossy perfection of influencers and the manic edge of doom content. It’s either an unboxing of a $5,000 Japanese toaster or a clip forecasting economic collapse by Tuesday. There is no middle.

    Some of this is generational. Millennials have aged out of thirst traps and into soft lighting and privacy. Gen Z, including my daughters, treat public self-aggrandizement with the kind of disgust once reserved for timeshare pitches and chain emails. To them, most online posting isn’t just unnecessary—it’s embarrassing.

    Chayka diagnoses the affliction as posting ennui—the existential fatigue of shouting into a void dominated by micro-celebrity algorithms and brand-filtered banality. We used to post in order to share something real; now we post to survive the algorithm’s cold indifference. And the algorithm doesn’t even show our friends anymore. So what’s the point? The casual post is now a ghost of its former self—undone not by controversy, but by irrelevance.

    Then there’s AI, which hangs over this whole landscape like a digital grim reaper. Now, even authenticity feels manufactured. Who made that caption? Who edited that face? Is that even a real voice? The uncanny valley has extended to your Instagram feed.

    Chayka predicts we may be headed toward what he calls Posting Zero—a post-social media state of blissful digital silence, where the compulsion to perform evaporates, and nobody’s life is reduced to a grid of curated lies.

    And honestly? I’m here for it.

    Let the pixelated word salads and beige hotel mirror selfies die a quiet death. Let the algorithm cannibalize itself. But here’s where I’ll add a wrinkle Chayka overlooks: even as posting dies, Podcast Land thrives.

    The podcast isn’t dead. It’s ascendant. While selfies wilt, microphones multiply. I know people—and I count myself among them—who have fully relocated to Podcast Land. Sam Harris talks to me for two hours a day. I fall asleep to history podcasts. I nap with AirPods in. I swing kettlebells to longform interviews about Stoicism and dopamine. I am deep in Podcast Land. I’ve got residency status.

    So yes, let the Instagram Stories dry up. Let the TikTok dances lose their rhythm. But don’t mistake this silence for disengagement. We’re still listening. We’re still absorbing. We’re just done performing.

    Welcome to Posting Zero. Now please keep your voice down—I’m trying to hear what Sam Harris is saying about the AI Takeover.

  • Why I Finally Quit Amazon Vine

    Why I Finally Quit Amazon Vine

    This morning, after 17 years, I finally quit Amazon Vine. The decision was overdue. Over the years, the quality and appeal of the products had steadily declined. Gone were the days of testing laptops and high-end gear. In their place: flimsy gadgets, unvetted accessories, and a parade of plastic odds and ends I never asked for.

    What made it worse was the imbalance. I was doing the product testing and writing detailed reviews complete with photos and “insightful” commentary. In return, I got stuff I didn’t really want and a tax bill for my trouble. Amazon got free labor. I paid the IRS. That’s not a perk. That’s a hustle.

    The required output of 80 reviews every six months might’ve been justifiable when the items were exciting. But lately, writing thoughtful reviews for phone cases, cheap jewelry, and off-brand supplements felt like donating my time to a billion-dollar corporation. It became clear: this was no longer a good use of my energy.

    The moment I quit, I felt an enormous sense of relief. If I want something now, I’ll buy it with my own money. No strings. No tax forms. No obligation to prop up Amazon’s quality control department for free.

    Maybe others are having a better experience with Vine. I hope they are. But after 17 years of watching the program morph into something transactional and thankless, I knew it was time to walk away. This was my experience. I’m glad to be done. Vine used to be fun. It no longer is, so this is the end of an era for me. 

  • The Gospel According to the CEO: Why Work Became Worship

    The Gospel According to the CEO: Why Work Became Worship


    Antonio García Martínez, author of Chaos Monkeys and veteran of the tech world, argues that many recent college graduates, adrift without a guiding philosophy or any grounding in the psychological architecture of religion, redirect their spiritual hunger toward the workplace. In particular, they latch onto tech companies as secular stand-ins for organized faith. These firms offer more than a paycheck—they offer a sense of belonging, higher purpose, and the illusion of transcendence.

    The tech campus becomes a modern monastery, where the faithful eat, sleep, exercise, and labor. With its cappuccino bars, Michelin-level cafeterias, on-site laundry, yoga studios, wellness centers, and libraries, the workplace becomes not just a job, but a lifestyle. Employees live in an upgraded dormitory fantasy—one where comfort masks control.

    At the heart of this corporate spirituality is the CEO, the charismatic founder who plays the role of messiah. Workers are fed lofty slogans about “changing the world” and “disrupting paradigms” while toiling for long hours in service of a vision that often benefits only the top brass. The leader isn’t just admired—he’s revered. The Kool-Aid is organic, gluten-free, and laced with grandiosity.

    This phenomenon has become cultural fodder, explored with increasing skepticism in shows like Silicon Valley, Severance, WeCrashed, The Dropout, and Devs. Documentaries such as The Inventor, WeWork: Or the Making and Breaking of a $47 Billion Unicorn, and Fyre: The Greatest Party That Never Happened expose the blend of megalomania, fraud, and collective delusion behind these so-called missions.

    What drives this mass suspension of disbelief? Part of the answer lies in what Derek Thompson calls “Workism”—the belief that one’s job is the core of one’s identity and life’s meaning. Combined with groupthink and CEO idolatry, Workism completes a trifecta of modern manipulation. In this new faith, the altar is a standing desk, and salvation is just one IPO away.

  • Camry vs. Accord: A Meditation on Spec Sheets, Obsession, and the Art of Manspreading

    Camry vs. Accord: A Meditation on Spec Sheets, Obsession, and the Art of Manspreading

    One of my favorite pastimes—oddly specific and strangely soothing—is watching YouTube comparison videos of the Toyota Camry vs. the Honda Accord. I’m not car shopping. I don’t need a car. I may never buy another car. But these videos are my digital comfort food. They’re as satisfying to me as fine wine is to a sommelier or apple pie tastings are to a pastry chef—only instead of tasting notes, I savor engine specs and torque curves.

    There’s something singular about the Camry-Accord rivalry. In the sedan world, these two are the Goliaths. It’s not just another car comparison. It’s the comparison. Watching these two go head-to-head year after year is like seeing the best Steelers team take on the peak Patriots in a Super Bowl that never ends. Everything else—BMW vs. Mercedes, Rolex vs. Omega—feels less pure. BMW and Mercedes aren’t in the same pricing tier. Rolex exists in a brand vacuum. And while coffee maker comparisons have their niche charm, they lack the existential gravity of Camry vs. Accord.

    No rivalry inspires more content—or more heated debate. YouTube is flooded with these matchups, and if you scan the view counts, it’s clear: Camry vs. Accord is the king of consumer showdowns. Reviewers comb over the details with forensic intensity—fuel economy, powertrain specs, road noise, trunk space, rear-seat legroom, infotainment ergonomics, ride comfort, styling. They break it down like seminary students parsing Greek New Testament syntax.

    But what really fascinates me is the comments section, where strangers proclaim their loyalty with righteous conviction. Owners justify their purchase with religious fervor, deploying cherry-picked data to reinforce their superiority. It’s a textbook case of post-purchase rationalization: that psychological reflex where we inflate the virtues of what we bought to feel smarter, savvier, and self-assured.

    One commenter might praise the Accord’s refined cabin and roomier interior—but add that its exterior is so bland, driving one is akin to living as an NPC. Another insists Camry’s superior sales figures are proof of its aesthetic and mechanical dominance. Some dismiss the Accord entirely, predicting its extinction in five years. Others proudly declare they’re on their fifth generation of the same car, with brand loyalty woven into the fabric of their identity. For these drivers, the car isn’t a tool—it’s family.

    Ultimately, this rivalry isn’t really about cars. It’s about identity, tribalism, and the human need to choose a side and be right. It’s a Dr. Seussian fable in metallic paint: one team wears Honda badges, the other wears Toyota, and both believe their side represents reason, taste, and truth.

    For those of us with no appetite for political tribalism, this is our outlet. Camry vs. Accord is safer ground—less polarizing than politics, but don’t tell that to a diehard on either side. Watch how they argue: calmly, firmly, methodically—as if their livelihood depends on selecting the superior midsize sedan. They approach the debate with the solemnity of theologians discussing substitutionary atonement or post-mortem salvation.

    And me? I’m both relaxed and riveted. The debate calms my nerves and sharpens my focus. For a glorious hour, as I parse suspension tuning and rear-seat headroom, my worries dissolve. My thoughts narrow into something blissful. I study the specs like they’re verses from Leviticus. And in that deep focus, my anxiety lifts.

    Then it hits me: I don’t actually want the car—I want the focus. The Camry and Accord are just proxies for obsession. They’re placeholders in the temple of hyper-attention. Some people do yoga. I watch two middle-aged men compare infotainment systems like Cold War arms inspectors.

    And I do this with full self-awareness. I said earlier I might never buy another car. That wasn’t entirely true. My wife owns a 2014 silver Honda Accord Sport. I drive a 2018 gunmetal gray Accord Sport. We’re a two-Accord household. When it comes to car-buying, I’m conservative by nature—and what’s more conservative than buying a Camry or an Accord?

    I’m nearly certain our next car—whether hers or mine—will be one of the two. Likely an Accord, given that I’m six feet tall, 230 pounds, claustrophobic, and deeply committed to driver’s seat manspreading. The Accord gives me room to sprawl. The Camry? Not so much. I know this because, during a San Francisco vacation, an Uber driver picked us up in a brand-new Camry. It looked sleek from the curb, but once inside I felt like I was strapped into a fetal position. The experience ruined the car for me.

    And yet, I want to love the Camry. I really do. In my ideal life, my driveway would have both: the Camry and the Accord parked side by side like yin and yang. One the smooth operator, the other the sensible sibling. Their competition makes each better. Their rivalry sustains them both—and keeps me obsessively circling the rabbit hole.

    Because in the end, the Camry vs. Accord battle isn’t just about choosing a car. It’s about longing for clarity in a world of noise. It’s about choosing sides, rationalizing decisions, and pretending—for a few hours on YouTube—that the world makes sense if you can just pick the right sedan.

  • The Phantom in the Mirror: On Becoming an NPC

    The Phantom in the Mirror: On Becoming an NPC

    The Non-Player Character—or NPC—was born in the pixelated void of video games. It is a placeholder. A background hum. A digital ghost whose job is to stand in a market, repeat a scripted line, or walk in endless circles without complaint. The NPC has no hunger for freedom, no dreams of becoming more. It exists in the half-life of interactivity—a cardboard cutout propped up by code. It’s “there,” but not there. You see it. Then you forget it. And that, in essence, is the horror.

    Somewhere along the way, the term slipped out of the screen and into real life. “NPC” became shorthand for a human who seems hollowed out—emotionally neutralized, culturally sedated, and spiritually declawed. Not stupid. Not evil. Just disengaged. The light behind the eyes? Gone dim. What was once an ironic jab at background characters is now a chilling metaphor for people who’ve surrendered to the most generic, algorithm-approved version of themselves.

    What’s grimly poetic is that NPCs in video games are often controlled by artificial intelligence. And so, too, are many modern humans—nudged by dopamine, entranced by endless scrolls, soothed by the hypnotic rhythms of consumption. The Roman formula of bread and circuses has merely been rebranded. Netflix. DoorDash. TikTok. It’s all the same anesthetic. As therapist Phil Stutz would say, we’re stuck in the “lower channel”—an emotional basement filled with numbing comforts and artificial highs.

    And yet, here’s the twist: even the brilliant can become NPCs. The anxious. The depressed. The overworked. The soul-sick. Sometimes the smartest people are the most vulnerable to emotional collapse and digital retreat. They don’t become NPCs because they’re shallow. They become NPCs because they’re hurting.

    There are, perhaps, two species of NPCs. One is blissfully unaware—sleepwalking through life without a second thought. The other is terrifying: self-aware, but immobilized. The mind remains active, but the body slouches in the chair, feeding on stale memories and reruns of past selves. Think of Lot’s Wife, gazing back at a past she couldn’t let go. She wasn’t punished arbitrarily; she was frozen in time—literally—a statue of salt and sorrow. The original NPC.

    Middle age is particularly fertile ground for NPC-ism. Nostalgia becomes narcotic. We mythologize our former selves—thinner, bolder, brighter—and shrink in the shadow of our own legend. Why live in the present, when the past is easier to romanticize and the future is too much work? Just ask Neddy Merrill from John Cheever’s “The Swimmer,” paddling from pool to pool in a daze, believing in a youth long gone, burning every real connection he had on the altar of delusion. An NPC in swim trunks.

    Today, we’re incentivized to become NPCs. Social media trains us like lab rats, handing out dopamine pellets in the form of likes, follows, and artificial intimacy. The real world—messy, unfiltered, full of awkward silences and genuine risk—is rejected for the smoother contours of algorithmic approval. Our souls are curated, our emotions trimmed to fit the timeline.

    The NPC, then, is not a throwaway gag. It’s a portrait of the modern condition. A spirit trapped in a basement, scrolling for meaning, addicted to memory, afraid of action. A being slowly turning into vapor, still breathing but no longer alive.

    And the true terror? Sometimes I feel it in myself. That quiet moment when I trade meaning for ease, purpose for distraction, vitality for sedation. That’s when I hear the whisper: You’re becoming one of them. That’s when I feel the NPC, not on my screen, but inside my skin.

  • Toothpaste, Technology, and the Death of the Luddite Dream

    Toothpaste, Technology, and the Death of the Luddite Dream

    A Luddite, in modern dress, is a self-declared purist who swats at technology like it’s a mosquito threatening their sense of self-agency, quality, and craft. They fear contamination—that somehow the glow of a screen dulls the soul, or that a machine’s hand on the process strips the art from the outcome. It’s a noble impulse, maybe even romantic. But let’s be honest: it’s also doomed.

    Technology isn’t an intruder anymore—it’s the furniture. It’s the toothpaste out of the tube, the guest who showed up uninvited and then installed a smart thermostat. You can’t un-invent it. You can’t unplug the century.

    And I, for one, am a fatalist about it. Not the trembling, dystopian kind. Just… resigned. Technology comes in waves—fire, the wheel, the iPhone, and now OpenAI. Each time, we claim it’s the end of humanity, and each time we wake up, still human, just a bit more confused. You can’t fight the tide with a paper umbrella.

    But here’s where things get tricky: we’re not adapting well. Right now, with AI, we’re in the maladaptive toddler stage—poking it, misusing it, letting it do our thinking while we lie to ourselves about “optimization.” We are staring down a communications tool so powerful it could either elevate our cognitive evolution… or turn us all into well-spoken mannequins.

    We are not guaranteed to adapt well. But we have no choice but to try.

    That struggle—to engage with technology without becoming technology, to harness its speed without losing our depth—is now one of the defining human questions. And the truth is: we haven’t even mapped the battlefield yet.

    There will be factions. Teams. Dogmas. Some will preach integration, others withdrawal. Some will demand toolkits and protocols; others will romanticize silence and slowness. We are on the brink of ideological trench warfare—without even knowing what colors the flags are yet.

    What matters now is not just what we use, but how we use it—and who we become in the process.

    Because whether you’re a fatalist, a Luddite, or a dopamine-chasing cyborg, one thing is clear: this isn’t going away.

    So sharpen your tools—or at least your attitude. You’re already in the arena.

  • Why Reading Is the Last Romantic Act

    Why Reading Is the Last Romantic Act


    If you take my Critical Thinking class, let me set expectations up front: I will not stand at the front of the room and lecture you into becoming an intellectual. That’s not how it works. I can’t command you to read. I can’t install curiosity like a software update.

    What I can tell you is this: the default setting is mediocrity. It’s smooth, seductive, and socially acceptable. The world—especially its algorithmic avatars—is built to exploit that setting. Platforms like OpenAI don’t just offer tools; they offer excuses. They whisper: You don’t have to think. Just prompt.

    You’ll get by on it. You’ll write tolerable essays. You might even land a job—something stable and fluorescent-lit with a breakroom fridge. But if you keep outsourcing your critical thinking to machines and your inner life to streaming platforms, you may slowly congeal into a Non-Player Character: a functionally adequate adult with no self-agency, just dopamine hits from cheap tech and cheaper opinions.

    The world needs thinkers, not task-completers.

    And that’s why I push reading—not as an obligation, but as a doorway to a higher mode of existence. Reading changes the texture of your thoughts. It exposes you to complexity you didn’t ask for and patterns of mind you didn’t inherit. But here’s the inconvenient truth: no one can make you read.

    Reading isn’t a commandment. It’s a love affair—and like any love worth having, it’s irrational, wild, and self-chosen. You don’t read because it’s good for you. You read because at some point a book wrecked you—in the best way possible. It made your brain itch, or your chest tighten, or your worldview crack open like an old floorboard.

    And that’s what I want for you. Not because it makes me feel like a good professor, but because if you don’t fall in love with ideas—on the page, in the margins, in someone else’s wild, flawed sentences—you’ll live a life someone else designed for you.

    And you’ll call it freedom.

  • Ozempification and the Death of the Inner Architect

    Ozempification and the Death of the Inner Architect

    Let’s start with this uncomfortable truth: you’re living through a civilization-level rebrand.

    Your world is being reshaped—not gradually, but violently, by algorithms and digital prosthetics designed to make your life easier, faster, smoother… and emptier. The disruption didn’t knock politely. It kicked the damn door in. And now, whether you realize it or not, you’re standing in the debris, trying to figure out what part of your life still belongs to you.

    Take your education. Once upon a time, college was where minds were forged—through long nights, terrible drafts, humiliating feedback, and the occasional breakthrough that made it all worth it. Today? Let’s be honest. Higher ed is starting to look like an AI-driven Mad Libs exercise.

    Some of you are already doing it: you plug in a prompt, paste the results, and hit submit. What you turn in is technically fine—spelled correctly, structurally intact, coherent enough to pass. And your professors? We’re grading these Franken-essays on caffeine and resignation, knowing full well that originality has been replaced by passable mimicry.

    And it’s not just school. Out in the so-called “real world,” companies are churning out bloated, tone-deaf AI memos—soulless prose that reads like it was written by a robot with performance anxiety. Streaming services are pumping out shows written by predictive text. Whole industries are feeding you content that’s technically correct but spiritually dead.

    You are surrounded by polished mediocrity.

    But wait, we’re not just outsourcing our minds—we’re outsourcing our bodies, too. GLP-1 drugs like Ozempic are reshaping what it means to be “disciplined.” No more calorie counting. No more gym humiliation. You don’t change your habits. You inject your progress.

    So what does that make you? You’re becoming someone new: someone we might call Ozempified. A user, not a builder. A reactor, not a responder. A person who runs on borrowed intelligence and pharmaceutical willpower. And it works. You’ll be thinner. You’ll be productive. You’ll even succeed—on paper.

    But not as a human being.

    You risk becoming what the gaming world calls a Non-Player Character (NPC)—a background figure, a functionary, a placeholder in your own life. You’ll do your job. You’ll attend your Zoom meetings. You’ll fill out your forms and tap your apps and check your likes. But you won’t have agency. You won’t have fingerprints on anything real.

    You’ll be living on autopilot, inside someone else’s system.

    So here’s the choice—and yes, it is a choice: You can be an NPC. Or you can be an Architect.

    The Architect doesn’t react. The Architect designs. They choose discomfort over sedation. They delay gratification. They don’t look for applause—they build systems that outlast feelings, trends, and cheap dopamine tricks.

    Where others scroll, the Architect shapes.
    Where others echo, they invent.
    Where others obey prompts, they write the code.

    Their values aren’t crowdsourced. Their discipline isn’t random. It’s engineered. They are not ruled by algorithm or panic. Their satisfaction comes not from feedback loops, but from the knowledge that they are building something only they could build.

    So yes, this class will ask more of you than typing a prompt and letting the machine do the rest. It will demand thought, effort, revision, frustration, clarity, and eventually—agency.

    Because in the age of Ozempification, becoming an Architect isn’t a flex—it’s a survival strategy.

    There is no salvation in a life run on autopilot.

    You’re here. So start building.