A friend in Hollywood told me there is a haunted house in his neighborhood.

Spooky lights emanate from every window at all times of the day and night.

In the front drive a Bentley is conspicuously parked… but unused and collecting dust.

What's haunting the house?

Professional Instagram influencers.

People who managed to find a following in these post-social infinite algorithmic hellscapes and are now doomed to forever attempt to stay on that bucking bronco.

They got swept up in the algorithm, and now are in a relentless co-dependent cycle with it.

They work for the algorithm.

An inhuman, insatiable boss.

But even the people who created the algorithm work for it.

It's a red queen race for engagement, in a fierce battle with other providers with clear network effects.

Step off the treadmill and you will be left in the dust before you know it.

The people who are in tune with the algorithm have a mutual co-dependency with it.

They understand the algorithm, what it wants, how to feed it.

They can anticipate its desires.

They know how to perform for it, to dance when it tells them to dance.

They are in a dark form of symbiosis with it.

But in a mutual pact that makes each a worse version of themselves.

(Of course, many people who have developed significant audiences in this post-social landscape are doing so in a way that is authentic to them and lifts them and their audience up. It's just also easy to fall into the more parasitic version.)

They have become algovamps.

Charismatic time-filling content devoid of meaning.

Drawing off the life force of the mutualistic other in a way that makes both less human.

They started off as normal humans but as they chase engagement themselves they have slowly become a husk.

Being an algovamp is not some intrinsic characteristic of the person; it is a situation they have become trapped in.

The only way out is to unplug from the machine.

If one algovamp signs off a dozen more are ready to take their place.

Swarms of algovamps and the algorithm, a swirling gyre of meaningless diversion.

At least the algovamps are human and so the content is at least partially human.

Imagine when the content producers are algos themselves.

Humanity caught up in a cyclone.