You’re being played like a piece on a chessboard. Unless you’re one of the players.
And what’s the board? It’s glowing in your hand right now. Instagram. TikTok. YouTube. The new temples of attention.
Their gods are engagement. Their priests are influencers. Their rituals are endless scrolls.
Every swipe is a silent prayer. Every click, an offering. You think you’re consuming content. But content is consuming you.
The system is beautifully simple. It doesn’t need to control you…. it just needs to train you.
Scroll long enough and you’ll feel the pull. A chemical leash made of dopamine and comparison. You don’t even need the ad anymore. You’ve become the ad.
They don’t sell attention. They sell you to whoever can afford you.
Your gaze, your mood, your late-night loneliness…. all mapped, priced, optimized.
And while you’re chasing likes, someone else is chasing equity.
There are only two kinds of people left in the digital world. Consumers. And Creators.
Consumers feed the machine. Creators feed from it.
Consumers scroll for validation. Creators build for velocity.
Consumers are chemically trained to crave. Creators are consciously training the same algorithms to amplify.
Both use the same tools. Only one uses them with intent.
This isn’t about fame. It’s about authorship.
Because in this game, visibility is power. But visibility without creation is captivity.
If you don’t create, you’ll be consumed. If you don’t tell your story, someone else will sell it back to you. If you don’t play, you’ll be played.
The most successful people online aren’t the smartest or the richest. They’re the ones who chose to be seen on purpose.
They understood that control today isn’t about owning factories. It’s about owning narrative.
You don’t need to be perfect. You just need to post. To write. To record. To make. To build something in the open.
Because when you create, you stop being a pawn. You start moving like a player.
The algorithm stops dictating your identity and starts distributing your vision.
The dopamine loop becomes a design tool. And the game flips.
So, next time you open this app, before you scroll ….ask yourself:
Am I feeding the game? Or am I bending it? Am I the pawn? Or the player?
Before power, there was persuasion. Before persuasion, there was language.
Every illusion begins there.
Advertising tells you you’re incomplete. Politics tells you you’re powerless. Religion tells you you must be forgiven. The algorithm tells you you must be seen.
Different voices, same message: You are not enough as you are.
We rarely notice how fluently we speak in our own captivity. How we repeat the words that keep us small. How easily language becomes a leash disguised as logic.
“Consumer.” “Follower.” “User.” We internalized those words until they became identities. We built empires of meaning on vocabularies of control.
And then we wondered why the world felt hollow.
Language isn’t neutral. It carves the invisible architecture of perception. It tells us what is desirable, what is dangerous, what is divine. Say a word enough times and it becomes a mirror. Look into it long enough and it becomes a cell.
Advertising doesn’t sell products. It sells permission to exist. Politics doesn’t sell vision. It sells fear of the other. Religion doesn’t sell redemption. It sells the illusion of brokenness. And the algorithm? It doesn’t sell attention. It sells identity on lease.
Write them down, word by word, until you see the pattern. See how every system manufactures emotion through repetition. See how “choice” became “consumption,” how “connection” became “content,” how “freedom” became “brand.”
We didn’t lose ourselves by accident. We outsourced our vocabulary.
To break the spell, we must reclaim the word. Stop parroting the phrases that keep us compliant. Stop mistaking slogans for truths. Stop confusing visibility with worth.
Freedom doesn’t start with rebellion. It starts with authorship.
The moment you name the illusion, you step outside it. The moment you write your own sentence, you stop being written by someone else.
Maybe the future isn’t about better algorithms or louder slogans. Maybe it’s about quieter words…truer ones. Words that return us to presence instead of performance. That remind us to be before we brand.
Because if every illusion begins with language, then every awakening begins with a new one.
So ask yourself: Whose words are living in your mouth? Who profits from your definition of “enough”? And what truth could begin, if you spoke in your own voice?
