Liberation from the Craze of Algorithms

When’s the last time you looked at a plant? I mean you felt the ridges and veins of its leaves, rubbed the scented wax on your fingers, felt how its body shaped the wind…. If you have ever really examined any representative of this wonderful group of organisms, you might understand the gravitational pull I felt for them as a kid. Every time recess broke out, I would spend my time “in the bushes,” as my friends said. Plants were my little pocket of heaven that nobody else understood. I imagined what it would be like to be a beetle and how palatial an asparagus fern would then seem to me. I collected all kinds of thorns and analyzed which ones were best suited to defend against squirrels. In second grade, I spent two months trying to find out where the seeds were on an ice plant. I squeezed and tasted every juicy part of that plant I could get my hands on. I checked out all the plant books in my city library that I could find. I was so excited when I found a new fact or dissected a new plant organ. When those ran out, I tried to read Darwin’s On The Origin of Species but didn’t get very far. My elementary school years were a blur of green and brown.

When middle school started, so did the pandemic (online school started in 6th grade for me and ended in 8th grade). I suddenly found myself with seemingly infinite free time as the online classes were much easier and the teachers were not well versed in technology. Concerned about the virus and other safety issues, my parents did not allow me to go out of the house without them. Consequently, I was stuck in my little half-underground bedroom staring at a large monitor. As an only child, I did not have anyone to talk to. Well, I thought, I can’t really go out and do anything else now. Why don’t I take a look at what the heck is on the internet? I started off by looking into biology, and with CRISPR-Cas9 technology and the biohacking movement fast gaining ground during those years, I fell in love with gene editing and biological augmentation (although I’m quite a bit more critical now). I even did home experiments and edited the genes of bacteria.

I say all this to provide context for what may at first seem an utterly unbelievable change in my story. My interest in modern applications of biology led me to a YouTube video about a United States military “con-plan,” a concept plan that lays out military actions under potential situations. This particular con-plan detailed the scenario of a zombie invasion. The video went into the details of the plan, explaining possible ways the invasion could start. To me, a budding biologist, but still a child, such explanations sounded perfectly plausible and scared me. I could see how one might easily gene-edit pre-existing parasites already known to control animal behavior and use them to infect humans and cause something similar to zombification.

I did not have many reassuring voices at home to jerk me out of this fear. I not only became very lonely but also began to distrust the outside world in general, especially the terrifying news my parents heard from relatives in Wuhan: deaths in every apartment building, hospitals and mortuaries full, and crematories running 24/7 and burning several corpses in one chamber. Mulling over the ideas in the video, I became paranoid. I was racked with nightmares when I went to sleep. Every time I heard a footstep, I froze in terror – I worried that my parents might have become zombies. My increasing panic and fear, coupled with my feeling of powerlessness in the face of worldwide pandemic, compelled me to find methods of escapism.

I started to look into what my friends had been constantly talking about from the beginning of the pandemic on social media: the video game Minecraft. At this time, a video creator called Dream was extremely popular. He was considered one of the best fighters in the game. I was irresistibly attracted to the raucous laughter, gleaming swords, fancy positions, and chaotic hand-to-hand battles in rugged landscapes that characterized his videos. Watching his videos made me feel like a powerful fighter. And, perhaps the most compelling of all factors, it seemed that every middle-schooler in the world was watching him. At any particular moment, millions of fans would be online. When I logged in to websites to talk with them, all my loneliness instantly went away.

Also, as a musician I paid special attention to the music discussed in these groups, and my preference quickly changed from classical to ’80s thrash and traditional metal. Similar to the video game content, the raw power these heavy metal songs helped me forget about my reality of a weak kid stuck in my little room with the constant worry of attack.

I began to immerse myself in the videogame and music content all day and all night. The fast-rolling and flashing movements of the video game scenes attracted my eyes like magnets; the heavy riffs, hard drums, and screaming vocals of heavy metal overwhelmed my ears like hammers. When I was watching the video game content, I was so pumped up with adrenaline that I forgot to eat and could not sleep. When I was not watching such content, I became alternately terrified and lethargic. The constant ups and downs of my emotions and energy caused my brain to malfunction. I felt as if my brain was filled with a horrible dense fog which only the swing of a virtual sword could penetrate. As a result, I watched more and more, forgoing food and sleep, and my health and mental status were on the edge of collapse. Only the simple jokes and drama in this online gaming community and the overpowering metal songs rattled about in my head.

However, at the same time that I clung to this community for energy and security, I began to get tired of it. The jokes all felt too shallow and repetitive, and the songs just repeated the same themes over and over. Even worse, whenever I tried to think deeply, as I had when I was a little kid dissecting plants, my preliminary thoughts would immediately smash into the desire for instant gratification on the internet. If I wanted to develop a thought further, all I could do was bounce it off a few other loosely associated ideas. I was constantly focused on finding something attention-grabbing to say to my fast-paced online friends. Get something NOW. Make it sound smart or funny or whatever — just say something! NEXT! There was no room in my hit-hungry brain for any delay that could have led to deeper thinking.

I felt like an orca in captivity whose sonar waves, instead of slowly travelling through the deep ocean, instantly bounced off the bottom and walls of a tiny tank, driving it crazy. The constant pattern of rapid but disjointed and vapid thinking felt as though I was courting brain-death.

When the lockdown was over, I resumed normal school activities and began to gradually awaken from the nightmare of the pandemic. I realized that I had two paths before me. I could continue to watch these video games and remain popular among my friends, both at school and online. However, because of both the fast-changing nature and compelling quality of this content, I would remain addicted to it. Such an addiction would shackle my ability to think deeply and creatively, and I would likely give up my dream of becoming a botanist. I was in such a mental state that this path seemed somehow alluring to me. The other path I saw was to prioritize my health and love of science over the pressures of my social circle and reject the activities and culture of my friends. It was with great willpower that I was finally able to decide to start living a more meaningful life.

My next step, then, was to recover the mental capacity I had lost during the pandemic years. I cast off all video games, metal/pop music, and social media. I traded my phone for a regular watch, only used to tell the time and set alarms. I set alarms to turn off my computer and go to sleep every day at 11pm. I started to go hiking, spent time in nature regularly, and home cooked almost all my meals from fresh and healthy produce. Although I lost my old friends, I gained many new ones.

I have realized that true joy in life is not gleaned from the constant but shallow pleasure of the internet but rather found through long struggles with deep concepts. Like an orca, I need to be in the deep ocean, where my sonar can travel far and bring back insights that contain true nourishment.

Amelia Zhang will begin her senior year in high school this fall. She wrote this essay specifically for TeensParentsTeachers, and it is posted here with her permission. 

Like most of the pictures on TeensParentsTeachers, the picture posted with this article is courtesy of a free download from Pixabay.com.