You are the A.I.

Submillennials have targets printed on their foreheads. ‘Market me into neutered servitude, just give me affirming likes.’ They generate complex secret languages of colourful emoji that the whole world is somehow supposed to be able to interpret, and believe earnestly that their meandering moods shape the weather. The 21st century has added to the ways the mirror can’t be trusted that it talks back, and that it shape-shifts. The ones who have been stuck in a self-centric digital hall of mirrors since waking up, they are interacting with a marketing machine controlled primarily by algorithms designed to increase engagement. They are disengaged by this, bubbles inside bubbles behind panes of optical acrylic.