“If we ate like this all the time, what would be wrong with that?” So asks David Foster Wallace, compellingly played by Jason Segel in the 2015 film The End of the Tour. Wallace is in the car with a Rolling Stone reporter, David Lipsky, gobbling sweets from a gas station when he says that. After Lipsky quips back about obesity, Wallace says, “It has none of the substance of real food, but it’s real pleasurable.” 

The End of the Tour is set in 1996 shortly after Wallace’s gargantuan novel Infinite Jest hit the literary scene and impressed the nation with its length, wit, tragedy, and insight. A massive book about loneliness, Infinite Jest takes place in a semi-futuristic America where technology and entertainment have merged so fearfully well that it’s nigh impossible to look away from it.  Sound familiar? 

Wallace foresaw the rise of the Internet and its pantheon of seductions, and you can feel it in the movie. Wallace is burdened by something nameless throughout the film; he appreciates the benefits of modern life and the deliciousness of the Big Mac, but he knew Americans were drunk on junk food, and not just in a physical sense. Our spiritual and relational lives were being decentered by the screen, by a basic addiction to pleasure and empty ambition. Here’s a powerful clip of Wallace warning Lipsky about the impending woes (warning: explicit content and language are used in this clip):

Big Tech’s addictive business models in platforms like Facebook, X, Instagram, and TikTok don’t love you but they want your money and attention. It’s so obvious that it’s laughable, but the model works. This was a problem in the age of TV, which Wallace witnessed, and he knew it would be an even bigger problem in the digital age. The question today is whether we can accrue the “machinery in our guts” necessary to fight back and stay human.

Cross-posted at Mind Matters News.