Unintended consequences are always the most fun, most bizarre, most soul crushing of all consequences following a given course of action. We prepare for every possible contingency, then we act, swiftly and meticulously, and we think we’re ready for the fallout. Then these little bastards show up, monsters we hadn’t planned to combat, but here they are just the same. Our choice led to their creation.

Scrolling through Facebook, I’m thinking that social media is just an unintended consequence of creating the internet, just one of the fucking monsters we could never have dreamed up when we first connected a majority of the world’s computers via fiber optics and derelict phone lines. We knew we were making the planet smaller, but we didn’t know exactly how that shrinking would play out. I’m left wondering if we still do.

The cup of coffee is still steaming as I bring it to my lips. I’ve burned my tongue, my mouth’s roof, even my goddamned teeth so many times on too-hot coffee for it to really bother me though. That’s the beauty of scar tissue: it just makes us more resilient.

The middle finger of my right hand works the scroll button on my mouse near-independently of conscious thought. It’s weird to think that mouse scrolling would become one of those automatic responses of humanity. Do you think the guy who invented the computer mouse had ever thought the use of his invention would become almost instinctual? Probably not.

My eye stops on one of those stupid “listicles” that are churned out every second of everyday by D-string media sites, sites that try to bill themselves as legitimate news but whose bread and butter is pictures of cats and Netflix recommendations. It would appear that is what counts as news these days, and with organizations like the Wall Street Journal charging $38/month for a subscription, the appearance is likely not changing.

I take another sip of coffee before clicking on the link. Its title is: 21 Times Tumblr Users Broke Reality. I’m sure you’ve seen similar titles from similar sites and I’m sure you’ve clicked on them. Everybody seems to click on them. It opens to a bright website, one full of color and pictures, reminiscent of the internet of the early 2000’s, bright pages with too many suggestive adverts and flash videos of dismal quality. You remember those days? It looks like they’re back.

Some of the posts are funny, but none of them really break reality, at least not for me. I’ve seen about half of the posts before, some several years old, and I wonder if the Tumblr/Reddit/4Chan users have just finally run out of shit to post about. Eventually every well dries up, so the pseudo-commentary of these denizens of the internet has an expiration date. Maybe we’ve reached it; maybe these sites will fall into disrepair before imploding; maybe we’ll look back on them in twenty years, asking each other if we remember such-and-such image board.

The real reason I clicked on this stupid link was because of a morbid sense of curiosity, the same kind of curiosity that has some drivers slow down to look at the aftermath of a car wreck on the highway. And like watching a car wreck, I am filled with a sense of sickness at the grizzly scene before me and gratefulness that it wasn’t me. I’m not looking at some mangled body that’s just been thrown through the windshield lying broken and crumpled on the blood-stained asphalt, so this revulsion might make no sense to you. What I am watching though, is a level of empty consumption and useless words that a majority of people find amusing. I am looking at creations of humanity be eaten by Tumblr users for their own glorification, and then again those Tumblr posts being eaten by a corporation to generate clicks for ad revenue. It’s a scene of intellectual cannibalism perpetrated because we have run out of other things to say.

History books likely won’t know what to say about the early 21st century. It is a time of general peace throughout the world, of scientific and technological advancement, of prosperity for a great many people on the planet. It’s strange to look at this time in human history as anything but chaotic, but when you compare it to the rest of this species’ time on this rock, it is in fact the zenith of human innovation and thought. My fear is that we have reached as high as we can, that we are about to plummet headlong into disaster because we have hit the limit to human achievement, that we as a species are courting extinction with barely even a care. But we are more concerned with how many likes we can get on our posts, how many people we can get talking about the things we’ve stolen from actual creators and innovators to place on our personal pages because we like the words or images, how many online friends we can convince that we are important.

We are okay with this and I can’t figure out why. Maybe the ugly truth is there isn’t an answer, isn’t a why, and this is just evolution at work, this is just the next stage in humanity’s development. Knocking back the dregs of my coffee, I make a tight-lipped grimace, more at my own hypocrisy than the bitter taste of that last swallow. I’m not going to get rid of my Facebook or Instagram, and I’m not going to stop trying to generate likes and comments and buzz for a brand that I’m trying to establish. I am no better than those that stole Tumblr posts to make a fucking listicle, no better than those Tumblr users who stole images and lyrics from movies and songs to pump up their own personal fucking pages.

We all consume media, and now the media we consume is starting to consume itself. Logging out of Facebook, I know I have to get away from the computer for a while. This consumption is just an unintended consequence of creating the internet. And my disgust at it is just an unintended consequence of me participating in the cannibalism.