The blue-and-white glow of Facebook faded. And me being me, what did I do? I dared to hope, just a little. Maybe the next site would be safe. Maybe something simple.
Wrong. Again!!!
The screen snapped to life, exploding with sound and movement.
"Great," I muttered. "Not TikTok. Not this."
Immediately, the feed launched into motion. Tiny vertical videos stacked endlessly, playing themselves with deafening enthusiasm.
A man in a giant banana costume danced while holding a cat.
A teenager shouted into a blender as part of some "extreme smoothie challenge."
A dog barked at an invisible ghost while subtitles screamed "YOU WON'T BELIEVE THIS!"
"Why is everything moving so fast?!" I shouted, blinking frantically. My glowing body jerked as the hand dragged me across the screen, forcing me to highlight hashtags and captions.
Then came the activist trend videos. People waving signs, crying, and begging the world to like, comment, share.
"If you love the planet, like this video!"
Hit heart for equality! Do it now!"
"This endangered animal needs 1 million likes!"
I groaned. "They're… they're begging for likes! Digital currency for morality now?!"
The human scrolled faster. I flew across challenges I could barely process.
The Cinnamon Roll Challenge. The Backwards Dance. The Ice Cube Slip. The Spicy Noodle Vomit. The Lip Sync Battle with a rubber chicken.
I blinked in horror. This is worse than Excel. Worse than Facebook. Worse than the Hub. Worse than… everything combined.
Every click brought me to a new horror. Videos about making slime in microwaves, claiming to summon ghosts, and ridiculous pranks that ended with someone shouting into the camera while falling off chairs.
I tried to dodge, but the hand dragged me forward.
Then a final atrocity appeared.
A "challenge chain" that asked viewers to stitch the video with their own attempt or face the shame of digital oblivion. Every comment begged for likes. Every caption screamed urgency. Every new trend became an infinite loop.
I closed my glowing eyes, blinking rapidly. "I didn't sign up for this! I just wanted a normal afterlife!"
But of course, there was no normal. Not for me. Not as a cursor.
And as the videos played endlessly, autoplaying faster and faster, I realized one horrifying truth:
The Trendspiral never ends.