Film
No film tells us more about tech burnout than Jeff Orlowski’s polemic The Social Dilemma, which shows that it is not simply a sad occasional casualty of digital consumption or social media engagement. It is inevitable. The tech burns you out because you are the fuel that is destined to be used up: you are the log throwing itself on the flames that warm the tech corporations. Addiction is algorithmically baked into the way social media works; cunningly conceived with all its little beeps and prompts and come-ons to keep you scrolling, liking and retweeting, yearning for the next insidious little dopamine hit of amusement, jittery and uneasy if your smartphone isn’t immediately to hand. Thus we are all unwittingly enlisted into an army of consumers whose presence justifies these corporations’ ad spends. Peter Bradshaw
