/r/MindfulLiving
SerenityFlow’s MindSpot channel was loaded up on the wall-screen, illuminating Dani’s entire bedroom. Dani was sitting down on her meditation cushion, sustainably sourced of course.
“Okay, little zen-seekers, let’s spend today’s session on reclaiming our focus,” the guru said in a soothing voice filtered through an intense audio compressor. “We are going to treat ourselves to the ultimate luxury in this always-on world: five whole minutes of uninterrupted being.”
The guru’s hands shimmered and changed color as different angles appeared on the camera.
“Don’t just look at your focus object. You need to shut out everything else from the world. Unlike a feed, this shouldn’t refresh. Don’t look to interact with it. Just let it be.”
Dani watched as a stream of comments appeared on the side of the screen from the other viewers.
Zenith you are LITERALLY saving my attention span. My FocusScore is up 10% this month!
Those five minutes felt like an hour. Great! #blessed
Just did this in my office’s analog zone. I need to send this to my teammates
Dani felt disillusioned. This didn’t feel real. It was no more than a coffee break promoted by businesses to make her feel like her mental health was being maintained. It felt like one more space that had been turned into a commodity that could be easily consumed. She tapped the feed and dismissed the video.
His feed refreshed, with the algorithm looking for something new to keep his attention. From his past experiences, it was aware he often enjoyed visiting fringe subreddits where meditation was treated more as an extreme sport than for wellness.
The first post that appeared was from /r/MindfulLiving:
Suffered from Uncurated Thoughts Syndrome after meditating for an hour
I thought I was ready but WOW. I’ve already done standard tens so I got an analog zone for a full hour. No sounds. No signals. At first it wasn’t bad. The first forty minutes or so were okay. Then the last twenty was chaos.
I ended up remembering playing in the grass of my backyard as a kid. I thought about a college friend that I hadn’t spoken to in a yera. I grew bored. You thought you knew what bored was but it was nothing like this. To sit there in NOTHING but your own thoughts. The syndrome is real guys. The influencers are right. Don’t be brave.
Dani felt a rare thrill. The establishment had finally came to a consensus on naming this condition. It was a warning against the natural state of the brain. But that only meant to push against their recommendations was edgy and rebellious.
She decided to pick a twenty-minute session. It wasn’t nearly as long as a full hour, but they would still see it as dangerous.
“System power down,” she commanded, plunging the room into a drab gray on every wall. The only light left was the sun peeking through the window.
Then she shut down the phone all the way.
She sat down on the floor and crossed her legs. She leaned back, arching her back. She placed her hands on her knees. She closed her eyes, trying to stave off the urges to scroll. She thought she heard the faint pings of notifications but she knew it was in her imagination.
Then she could feel the syndrome happen to her.
There was a flash of memory in her head. She was roughly seven years old and running around a large tree in a city park. The sensation felt vivid. She could feel the warm sun on her face. She could feel the rough texture of the bark as her hand ran across it.
Then she felt a profound sadness for a girl named Eileen that she only knew from elementary school. She recalled saying something mean about Eileen’s shoes and how the girl cried. Why had she done that? She hadn’t apologized. Why was she feeling regret about that decades later?
She found a growing sensation of herself and her own body. She could sense her lungs expanding and contracting. She felt her heart beat slowly against her ribs. The raw data felt overwhelming without any way to organize and filter it. None of this could be shared either. They were only available to her.
She had shut off every process, so she didn’t know how much time had passed. The memories and sensations had now been replaced by an even deeper worry.
“Who am I?” the question echoed in her head, filling her with existential dread.
Who was she as an individual, removed from all the social media feeds and data sensors that defined her to the world? She wasn’t much of anything, just a small animal sitting in an empty room. A person without a presence.
Finally it was too much. She opened her eyes and leapt for her phone. Her fingers trembled as she hit the power button. She was welcomed by a bright corporate logo as the operating system booted. It gave her an immediate comfort.
Her feed reloaded instantly. The top post now was just sent by SerenityFlow, a smiling selfie with a fake succulent sitting behind her. The caption read:
Took my five and now I feel so #grounded. So great to reconnect with my #authentic self. #blessed #mindful
Dani’s fingers tapped the glass screen hard and dismissed that post. Then she loaded up /r/MindfulLiving and began a new post to warn others against the abyss she had just faced.
Tried for twenty and nearly forgot my user handle. Not worth risking any more than five. Stick to that.