I knew something was severely wrong when I couldn’t remember who wrote The Great Gatsby. I’d studied F Scott Fitzgerald’s 1925 novel intricately at school and revisited the text during university, where I was awarded a first class degree in English literature by a Russell Group institution. Yet here I was, during a general knowledge quiz, seven years later, drawing a complete blank on who penned one of the best known works of the 20th century.
To put it mildly, it felt as though my brain was slowly falling out of my arse. Whether brushing my teeth or in a meeting, I found it hard to tear my eyes away from the short-form slop my social media algorithm was feeding me. The phone, somehow, knew this. Each night as I got sleepier, the content would become more and more mind-numbing: AI fruit people starring in a telenovela; viral ASMR videos asking me to choose from bedrooms made from strawberry cheesecake or wobbly rainbow jelly. It was like being on acid, with none of the personal or spiritual revelations.
