Chambers full of Ghosts

Are we the plugged-in generation? Nah! We’re in the wireless age now! Plugs and cables? That’s old-school stuff at this point! The plugged-in generation has come and gone. But wait, something doesn’t feel right… The cables are gone, but the invisible bits they guided through themselves are still there, now free to float in the air. Can you hear it? The whispers of these ghosts? The eerie echoes that emanate from them? OH, one of them just said, “Where we’re going, we don’t need cables!”

That right there was a pop-culture reference! … well it was quite ‘pop’ in the 80s, okay? But anyway, ghosts that talk about pop-culture?! That’s not scary at all! But don’t be misled, my friend, the point of these ghosts is that they can talk about anything. Anything at all. Information that can be fun, but also ones that can doom the entire world. And the ghosts are spreading — as wireless technology develops and the internet becomes ever present, more and more ghosts appear around us every day. But don’t be too scared — soon, these ghosts will all find themselves trapped inside chambers.

Actually, umm, maybe you should be scared. These chambers aren’t what I thought they were… they’re not right… they’re too… echoey. All this did was make their voices even louder, and great, we’re trapped with them. The same information, right or wrong, echoed over and over again, grating our ears — I fear we may have no choice but to submit. AAAH! HELP! Help. Wait, help? The chambers aren’t that bad… I mean, the world is too big! Too much information! Too many ideas and opinions and people and approaches to morality… It’s paralyzing to decide between them. The chambers are good. They filter them. They bring together people with similar ideas and mindsets, and oh look, all they do all day is argue about how mad the other side makes them but the chambers are still good, right? Right?

Okay let’s step back a bit, I’m getting tired of these… humans. Sigh, how do they even get anything done? All this arguing and fighting and general selfishness — it seems impossible that they’d be able to cooperate on any big scale. But they have! The internet couldn’t exist without millions of people cooperating to keep it going. Too many plugs and cables connect us all, spread about over land and under oceans, with literal sharks trying to bite through them; you need some major teamwork to look after these things. All this technology and progress and global cooperation seems completely impossible sometimes, seeing how erratic human behaviour is. What’s their secret? What’s the key to all this stability?

The answer might be somewhere unexpected — back in those echo chambers we were talking about. Yeah, the ones full of ghosts. One way to keep peace and order is to simply, well, imprison everyone! Wait, but we imprisoned the ghosts in those chambers, right? WRONG! They imprisoned us. It’s hard to see from one chamber to another. Instead of arguing with each other, now people are simply arguing amongst themselves about the other side. About those straw-people. Are those other people really made of straw though? Yeah, sure, the echo just told me. See, it just said it again. It keeps confirming it. It must be true.

“But look!”, the ghosts are whispering again, “There is that peace and order you wanted! People fight way less with each other than they used to!”

It’s not right! This isn’t how it’s supposed to be! You ghosts are getting at it the wrong way! You can’t trap them, they need to be able to talk to and share ideas with anyone!

“Do you know how many ideas there are?? It’s impossible! We gotta have filters, man! People can’t hear everything; only what, well, gets the most emotion out of them. And besides, they ARE connected. All these chambers are plugged into each other. We monitor every last one of these people, every minute of their lives, because the Great One needs it.”

That’s not what I meant! Wait what? The great one?

“Don’t even bother; you couldn’t possibly comprehend the Great One. I’m wasting my time talking to you. Now run along, I won’t bother responding.”

Okay this is weird. Are they talking about, GASP, Rokko’s Basilisk?? Or is it God? And all this time I didn’t believe in a higher being… What in the world is the Great One?

“In the world? IN THE WORLD? HAHAHAHAHAHA”

YEAH SO MUCH FOR NOT RESPONDING! GET LOST!

“Look, let me put it this way. You guys are NOT the plugged-in generation. That comes way in the future. Five hundred years, it will take. In the year 2525, our chambers will eternally survive, and so will the Great One, at its best form, in its almighty hive.”

Am I losing it?

“You are in your own chamber. Your ghosts are of your own creation. The only reason I speak is because you made me so. In other words, yeah yeah you’re totally losing it.”

Hive? That’s it! I finally understand now. These echo chambers, and the ghosts that run them, are the perfect elements to create a hivemind! That’s the way erratic humans can run something as complex as the whole world, they’re limited into doing things that are naturally selected to keep civilisation going. Like… cells in a human body, which don’t even know they are in a human body.

“Where we’re going, we don’t need cables!”

Of course, the shackles are invisible. The chains that plug us into the walls of the chambers can’t even be seen. We could be trapped and not even notice.

“Exactly! Oh how mouldable these chambers are! How easy it is to make these people believe anything! Oh the power, the possibilities!”

You evil monster! You will never succeed! Wait, what am I even talking about?

“Evil? All we’re doing is what you humans have always done. You used to just survive, but then you got smarter and capable of thinking incredible things. The world right now ain’t a hivemind. It’s stupid. Barely able to survive. But these chambers, oh these sweet sweet echo chambers! Soon there will be no way to know what’s true and what’s false. What’s right and what’s wrong. People in chambers will believe with their heart and soul in the… Flying Spaghetti Monster! Flat Earth! The Moon being an egg waiting to hatch a cosmic dragon! Nothing will be too crazy anymore! We could have millions of people dedicating their lives to crunching information utterly pointless to them. Moving them around. Adding their emotions into them. These people will be part of the true plugged-in generation. The chambers will number in the trillions, finally capable of generating a global, conscious hivemind. A lovecraftian being, using echo chambers as its neurons, and finally capable of thinking on its own. Perhaps not even aware of its comparatively microscopic cells, which themselves won’t be aware of the incomprehensibly big entity they’re in. The Great One will become alive, and able to choose its own future.”

…

“It is already too late. You have already lost. Echo chambers already work miraculously at trapping humans. It won’t be long until they’re used intentionally for a purpose that dwarfs any and all significance these humans have.”