The Covid pandemic has created economic and health consequences as a result of lock-downs, the loss of jobs and income, interrupted schooling and the rules that prevent humans from doing what we prefer to do — which is mix, interact and spend time with other humans, colleagues, friends and family.

I am talking about Mental Health that grips most people in some fashion from time to time, in that everyone struggles with dealing with what life throws at us, the death of a loved one, or general insecurity, disappointment, feeling alone, or the world is moving away from us, as we experience the dozens of quite normal feelings and thoughts each of us wrestle with daily. And yet for some, these feelings and emotions runaway with their lives beyond their ability to control it, unable to recover from it, requiring persistent help, is a reminder to all of us life is fragile, precious and a result of natural selection and the balance of nature.

Weaponising Mental Health

Let us not forget our governments have already weaponise Mental Health — in particular the constant manipulation of NEWS channels that only talks about ‘bad news’ rarely good news. They as in Deep State, would have us believe our country, our world is constantly on a war footing or verge of collapse. Because it suits their purpose to keep us all off balance — when in fact the world generally is good. We are indeed doing better than 75 years ago, a 150 years ago, 300 years ago. Albeit humanity is doing its best to ruin the climate and disturbing the natural balance of planet earth.

We are already seeing the effects our modern way of life and the technology revolution is having on mental health, whether it is obsessive gaming and spending too much time in the ‘blue screen’ or being glued to smart phones, all part of the behavioural manipulation of Facebook (and other platforms) that makes us dependent, insecure and places destructive news into your ‘news feed’ that is curated to upset you and feeds your anxiety. Often designed to incite hatred between friends, families and communities that is undermining democracy. While government sit back and let them, as they also benefit from the data collected for the purpose of control and manipulate the masses.

You can’t fake a fake, or can you?

Digital Dementia is real, it isn’t a fake condition, is very prevalent in the current XYZ generation of youngsters who have lived too much in the blue screen, rarely play outside and thus didn’t develop the full array of human communication skills, the primary function of using their imagination to develop their creativity is often underdeveloped or missing. They grow up with a reduced cognitive function and the long terms effects don’t look so good.

Too many youngesters and people live in a world they think they can control – as after all the entire purpose of social media is to convince ourselves and others that life is much better online, and you can always start the level again. Its all very odd as humanity has developed a fake-ness where social media users can pretend their lives are really so much better than yours, ours to theirs — creating a fake persona, a lifestyle that is unachievable, and where the hidden and masked downside nobody talks about, that is deep depression and a feeling of not being good enough.

A world of subtle comparisons, judgements, is further gamified to make sure everyone keeps up the pretence of living the exciting life, to impress others, the people in your network that aren’t really your friends anyway. As the rise of influencers can attest — we reward fake people for being fake, as they present their lives to us that are apparently so much better than our own. For many who are struggling they are constantly reminded they are falling short and can never aspired to being good enough, as they sink further into the spiral of depression.

Facebook wants you to be a zombie

The broader Mental Health issues and challenges is about to get far worse, as humanity is about to take a dead end path to an accelerated dystopia. By inserting a false environment that will rewrite the rules of nature selection, and distort the process of growing up, learning and sensing the world around us, and delivering an assault on all our senses at once, but not the ones that matter. It is inevitable some of the Big Tech firms, primarily the ring of Satan that includes Microsoft and Facebook that have a dark and dangerous plan to escalate the weaponisation of mental health, are all over it. Anything that accelerates their plans are to create a population digital zombies unable to live and adjust in the real world, tied into their digital world for the sole purpose of creating dependency for monetisation and control. And worst of all they are investing in educational companies so they can entrap our children early.

We are of course talking about the metaverse, that encompasses gaming and immersive headsets which sounds innocent enough, until you realise its being engineered to deliver an Orwellian outcome. Why are so many people, founders, investors and organisations are piling in to build and finance a fake human world, convincing those around them, the metaverse will deliver new and exciting experiences living in the physical world cannot…for profit of course.

Imagine encouraging a person who is overweight to not eat at all, pointing to their immediate weight-loss as a benefit, how good they look until they become too weak to move, and their organs stop working and cognitive functions stop. They are then force fed, existing in a comatose state, sounds familiar does it not?

As photo-realistic game engines that includes the amazing Unreal 5, that can create real time rendered images and environments that are indistinguishable from real life (or close to), as they create new worlds for people that want to experience something different, and an essential too for film makers and story tellers. But they have also created an opportunity for vulnerable people to run away from their real situation, to hide in plain sight.

Some may say what’s wrong with providing a release from reality and escapism, which is fine until it becomes the new norm, making going back much harder. These environments render around the user, its is a full 360degree immersive experience, your are your digital twin, the gamer, your own protagonist (or antagonist) in a story you can create (or think you have), a second-lifer where you are immersed in the ultimate experience, all computer generated. Experiences that effect your mood, your physiology, your cognitive function and thus your mental state of mind — as the immersive experience grips and controls you.

We have to ask — will life really be better on the inside of a digital world?

Do we live in a simulation as many scientists believe, and if so isn’t themetaverse a fake world inside an already fake world? The majority fortunately believe in science — that tells us it has taken 14billion years to shape our universe, 4 million years for life to emerge we call ‘natural selection’ and where the odds of being born is 1 in 400 trillion.

Then there is the various scenarios that comprise the Fermi Paradox that asks ‘are we alone in the universe’? Or are the conditions where earth and life is created a one off where millions of random conditions and events came together in the chaos of the universe? Also known as the Rare Earth Hypothesis…

But before continuing let me declare that I, like many people, enjoy playing first person shooter games such as Call of Duty, an overhang from my childhood as my father went to Normandy 6th June 1944, and WWII has always fascinated me. However I haven’t played COD with headsets and suits, standing on platforms that move — apparently to make the gaming experience full, real and interactive. For me it’s just a game and I don’t want to fully experience war, being shot or killing someone else up close and personal. Having the hand controls vibrate is good enough for me.

Natural selection and wind in my hair

Maybe I am old school. Having said that I am in my 60’s having spent a life living in the real world, while working in tech all my life. These days I spend my time working on advanced tech — AI, Quantum Computing, Neuromorphic tech, Blockchain etc that makes me a tech fan right?

Personally, I prefer experiences that make your gut drop, I like wind in my hair, the sensation of speed and sun on my back. I love being in rough waves that deliver a sense of danger, I really love roller-coasters especially the ones with a corkscrew that for a few milliseconds disorientates you, I love driving fast convertibles with the lid down; I like the thrill of riding in helicopters as they rattle through the air and driving fast on a race track where the risk of crashing is real. I love the challenge of going one stage in front of thousands of people, the nerves before you deliver a talk, I love being out of my depth in situations where I have to sit back listen and learn, and the backlash from people (my wife mostly) when I upset them that reminds us sometimes we over step and have to be less selfish.

Is this what it is like to be human? Is consciousness after all about experiences, tuning into all the emotions and physical feelings — that makes us feel alive? Is consciousness and being alive about experiencing real things?

As we know each of us experiences the world differently. But isn’t the metaverse drawing a single view of the world, which will be the same for everyone? Has the millions of years of natural selection prepared us for a artificial world where the rules are made up by the programmers and the people that control it? Let us be reminded that nature doesn’t operate for profit, instead it is part of a delicate ecology that is interconnected?

So here we are as the dawn of the metaverse as it emerges, where the Zuckerberg wants to rename his company meta ( is hebrew apprently means DEAD), as he excitedly recognises an new opportunity to enslave us all, part of a new digital world he can manipulate and control…

We can witness the dark side of tech as the western world succumbs to Authoritarianism, something Orwell predicted way back when… One example is the attempt by unelected people trying to create a European Union superstate, where the objective is control of a single block of countries, removing their sovereignty and ability to make decisions. Another is track and tracing apps on everything — largely because in the US collecting ‘meta data’ doesnt breach privacy laws, but is actually the most valuable data about us.

We already live in a surveillance society, where the sneaky politicians post 911 increased their powers pushing through legislation (Homeland Security Act is an example) without consultation, and again during Covid — in the name of national security and protective nationalist strategies, they have given themselves more power over the people.

Humanity is about being human? Right?

The problem I have with all of this emerging metaverse ideology is simply this — humans are NOT designed to live in an artificial world, we are sentient beings, whos entire existence is based on trying to live a life to the best of our abilities, unless you are unfortunate to be born with ailments, in a war zone or in a region where life expectancy is low. How do you live, propagate and forge lasting relationships within a computer generated everything?

Going online, using social media, and playing games is addictive! The short term mental health implications is called ‘depression’, IS the primary diagnosis. We know that suicide rates in the youth of today are connected to feeling inadequate and worthless, comparing themselves to the fakers, sites such as Facebook continually remind those vulnerable (who struggle to cope anyway), they are worthless, ugly, weak and performing bad and not up to scratch.

What happens when people are only happy in the metaverse? What happens when the metaverse servers break, are hacked and the user encouraged to do increasingly bad things that can spill over into reality. Or as in my previous article — AI steals who your ‘digital self’, creates a new and better version and locks you out of this alternate world, or killing your ‘digital twin’ — what then?

Do we know the long term effects of false stimulus on the brain, of an altered state, and a different reality. Are unnatural things likely to happen — where our brains can experience death without dying, experience a different situation that would never manifest in the physical world, forced to have emotions without sensations, a life without living?

I am far more entertaining and successful online…

One thing we do know for sure — life won’t be better on the other side, because it’s not life, it’s not real and there is a real danger people will think this is their reality, a life better than what they have, an escape maybe. But it is also a life wasted, corrupted and manipulated by someone else on their terms to benefit their agenda….isn’t this the definition of a ‘cult’.

Let us remember where the Law has influence and where it does not. Who will police the metaverse? What are the rules, the constitution, the moral do’s and don’t? Or is it like ‘Westworld’ where the machines indulge all human desires, making them weak and vulnerable before turning on the humans? Computers and AI are not covered by the Law. Code can write itself, thus who is responsible when something goes bad, a crime, theft, fraud, bullying and life is lost. In Digital Murder — who is to blame? Who can be sued and brought to account. If you lose money in the metaverse by fraudulent means, who decides?

Augmented and Virtual Reality have a place in society as tools for commerce, for accelerated learning and problem solving. These technologies operated by responsible companies for specific tasks and activities. AR as useful guides for users, consumers and yes for entertainment. But the people that run the metaverse want you to be fully immersed, fully committed and dependent…

We stand on the brink. Like the nuclear age it cannot be uninvented. Like AI it cannot be put back in the box….but then again the metaverse migh be part of a new evolutionary path towards ‘transhumanism’ as humans and machines merge… You decide.

Author:© Nick Ayton 2021

Nick is a futurist, technologist, speaker and writer on all things Deep Tech.