The Social Media Catastrophe

Smart People are Very Worried, but Not Worried Enough

There’s a fantastic Cult Classic horror movie from 1984 called “Cathode Ray.” You’ve probably never heard of it. What made it truly amazing was the terror came not from violence, but from a dystopian layer that builds in its creepiness minute by minute and challenges your notions of free will itself. It opens like this.

A rural family in Georgia, on a Saturday afternoon in the fall, goes through their normal routine before heading out to tailgate at a college football game. Ordinary Americana. The two boys wake up, and immediately start playing the movie’s equivalent of an Atari 2600, but before they take the joystick they stick a hypodermic needle in their arms, which feeds them some kind of drug drip from the game console. They stare at the television, and their parents don’t even notice the IV. The mom even steps over the tube, as if this is normal. Creepy. The dad opens up his newspaper for the morning, but instead of a newspaper it’s got a TV embedded in it, and he too jacks in a strange tube from the TV right into his arm. Mom doesn’t say a word. The special effects in this movie are kind of garbage because it was low budget, but the director focuses on the mom here, and her utter disregard for the tube in her husband’s arm. Very creepy. Mom goes to the bathroom and takes a shit, which is the sort of thing you…