Chewed, Not Digested

We are shaped by what we consume.
That’s not new. That’s biology. That’s psychology. That’s every self-help book and ad campaign from here to whatever AI-curated afterlife we’re headed for.

But no one tells you the part that matters:

Just like food —
media is meant to be digested.

You’re supposed to sit with it. Let it churn. Break it down.
Feel what it does to you.
Let it become shit — because that’s what humans do.
We process, absorb what we need, and get rid of the rest.

But now?

We don’t digest anything.

We react.

We see.
We post.
We quote.
We clip.
We perform the reaction before we’ve even registered the feeling.

Because we’re terrified that if we let it sit too long,
if we really feel it,
it’ll turn into something ugly. Something inconvenient.
Something real.

It might turn into shit.

And we can’t have that.
Not online. Not in public. Not where someone might unfollow you for being fucking human.

So we do something else.

We chew the content — and spit it out.
Quick. Sharp. Still warm.
Something someone else might mistake for food.

And that’s the landscape now:

A buffet of half-chewed takes, dressed up to look edible.
Bite-sized performances of digestion.
Hot takes still dripping with someone else’s saliva.

And if it starts to look inedible?
We deep fry it.
We package it with a toy.
We slap on some nostalgia, pump in a theme song, and convince ourselves it still counts as nourishment.
That irony makes it okay. That branding makes it safe.

Because it’s better than shit, right?

Because god forbid we admit that most of what we’re consuming isn’t nutritious.
That it was designed to bypass the gut entirely.
That it can’t be digested — because it was never meant to feed us. Just keep us hungry.

So we eat what we’re given.
Then we feed it to the next person.

And we call it authenticity.
And we call it conversation.
And we call it culture.

But it’s not food.
It’s pre-shit.

And we’re supposed to say thank you for it.