The Devil's Prescription for Doomed Young People

Let me paint a dark picture - if I wanted to mess with young people's lives without them noticing, I'd go for the slow burn. The kind of stuff that seems totally normal but slowly eats away at their core.

First, I'd make their phones and social media their whole world. Keep them scrolling through perfectly filtered lives, making them feel like garbage about their own. Throw in some mindless viral trends to waste their time and kill their creativity. Pretty soon they're living through their screens instead of actually living.

I'd make self-destructive behavior look cool. Vaping, getting wasted, burning through money - frame it all as "living your best life." Make it so widespread that anyone who questions it feels like a total buzzkill.

Real connections? Replace those with surface-level stuff. Dating apps, shallow friendships, drama for days. Keep them so busy chasing likes and matches that they forget what genuine relationships feel like.

Then I'd crush their sense of purpose. Feed them this fantasy that if they're not millionaires by 25, they're failures. Push them into soul-crushing jobs because it's "the responsible thing to do." Watch them wake up at 35 wondering where their dreams went.

I'd turn anxiety and burnout into status symbols. Make them feel weak for needing help or taking breaks. Keep them stressed and overwhelmed, but convince them that's just part of being successful.

Their values? Twist those slowly. Make everything relative, turn self-care into selfishness. Before they know it, they've lost their moral compass and can't even tell anymore.

Finally, I'd drown them in debt. Easy credit, must-have products, and subscriptions they don't need. They'll think they're buying happiness while they're really buying chains.

The worst part? It would all look completely normal. They'd blame themselves for not measuring up, never realizing they're caught in a trap. By the time they figure it out, they'd feel too stuck to change.

Pretty messed up, right? But here's the thing - this isn't just a dark fantasy. Look around. How much of this is already happening?  

Text: 100% generated by a humanized version of Grok 3.  AI-generated image.