Luke was getting desperate. It had been months since any of his writing had gone viral and his income was drying up. He needed clicks, he needed eyeballs, but for whatever reason none of his usual material was hitting the mark anymore. Late one night he found himself scrolling eBay, he didn’t know exactly what he was looking for or why he was even bothering but it felt like a welcomed distraction from worrying about where his next meal was coming from.
Out of boredom he found himself in the electronics section and stumbled head first into the computing listings. Advert after advert after advert screamed the same thing - buy me; my specs are the best! He took a draw on his vape and let a huge cloud of strawberry melon smoke billow from his lungs. “God, they all sound as desperate as me” he laughed. He gave one last flick of the mouse wheel and was about to give up for the night when one listing caught his attention.
For Sale: Custom Made Laptop For Writers and Authors
High spec laptop, custom internals in desktop replacement shell. Made as an experiment to see what I could squeeze in the available space. Spec too big to list here, see pics. Has stickers on lid, can be removed. Bespoke operating system, Linux build with algorithmic tuning, optimised for writing viral content.
Only used once to check build. Comes with power supply and cables. No returns.
£300
Buy It Now
Luke clicked on the images. Ok, yeah, the stickers were garish as fuck, and tacky, but then if I’m staring at the screen all day who cares?! he thought. Everything else looked perfect, and if it was used once, this was a bargain given what the seller had done to it. He didn’t need all that computing power; he was just a freelance writer, not some developer writing quantum algorithms in Python or pro-gamer. At least this beast would be future-proofed for a long time to come.
That description was reeling him in though - algorithmically tuned…optimised for viral content…
He didn’t want another piece of tech, he couldn’t afford to waste the cash but he needed any advantage he could get to make money again, and, for some reason, this laptop was too compelling to ignore. Fuck it. He made his decision and bought the laptop.
Luke spent the next day wrestling with buyer’s remorse. Stupid, stupid, stupid he kept chanted over and over to himself. Spunking the last of his available funds on a whim - and he couldn’t even blame it on being drunk either, what the hell was I thinking? He sat at his aging desktop computer and logged onto his eBay account, clicked on My Ebay then Purchase History hoping that he could cancel the laptop before it would get shipped and get his money refunded somehow. Maybe the Seller would take pity on him, being a penniless writer? But then that was the whole point in buying it in the first place, he scolded himself.
The listing wasn’t there.
Luke stared at the screen. That’s not possible. Luke refreshed the page, checked again. No listing for the laptop. He logged into his PayPal account to check whether he’d paid for it. Was this some sort of elaborate scam? He couldn’t figure out how it was executed if it was. No charges made, and none pending.
What the fuck is this?, he thought. Slowly doubt turned into tentative relief. Maybe he didn’t buy anything at all! Maybe he’d been burning the candle too many nights in a row and fatigue had finally caught up with him. Whatever the case, it looks like he was off the hook - no laptop bought, no money lost. Luke sat for a moment - there’s a story here, and he started typing.
“Did you buy something from eBay and then didn’t?”
Oh God, that’s utter garbage, why can’t I write anymore, his stomach knotted looking at the headline he’d just written. “I’m so fucked” he breathed aloud, and shaking his head he left the cursor blinking and walked out the spare room.
Luke didn’t return to his office for a full day. He just couldn’t face the reality that his writing days were over. He wandered the local high street looking through shop windows, trying to imagine himself working in each one - wearing some sort of sack-sized, ill-fitting t-shirt with a logo and name tag. Pushing a trolley around stacking shelves, or making coffees for ungrateful wretches who like nothing but to moan about how you spell their name on the fucking cup of their skinny mocha with almond milk froth at 74 degrees and a shower of cinnamon dust in the shape of a giant cock just to piss them off.
Oh fuck this. Utterly dejected, Luke decided he’d had enough of trying to cheer himself up with job prospects.
It was verging on early evening by the time Luke’s feet were finally taking him home. The sky was painted in a glorious blend of amber, copper and rust, and for a moment it took his mind off the crisis that would await him once he entered his flat. He got to the main stair door and there was a large box sitting there. I can’t stand these delivery guys, just dropping parcels when they can’t get access. Anyone could steal this, for fucks sake! he thought, trying to look at the label. It had his name on it. Eh? He turned the box over, heavy fucker, no return address. Just a plain, brown, cardboard box with a single packaging label with his name on it.
No way!
He picked up the box, this thing weighed a ton.
desktop replacement
He carried it and himself up the stairs to his flat door.
an experiment to see what I could squeeze in the available space
He quickly checked around him, the stair was quiet apart from muffled sounds emanating from other doors - talking, the TV, a cat scratching to get out - but nothing else. He closed the door behind him.
Spec too big to list
Luke walked to the kitchen and placed the box on the worktop. His mind raced at the thought of having a brand new laptop for free, free!, because of some stupid eBay glitch? This was all too weird and yet here it was. In his kitchen.
with algorithmic tuning, optimised for writing viral content
Grabbing a steak knife from the cheap block he’d gotten as a Christmas gift he slit the taping around the edges of the plain box and opened it. Inside was the laptop, nestling in bubblewrap, the loud stickers on the lid shouting their anime origins at him through the plastic. He unwrapped it like a child tearing at Easter egg foil to get at the chocolate prize, and marvelled at how incredibly lucky he was.
Luke stroked the laptop like he was running his hands over a vintage car. It was just a matte grey slab with horrifically cheap stickers on the lid but to him the prospect of writing optimised viral content to make money again outweighed the mixture of garish and mundane aesthetics. He took the laptop out of the box, and holding it close to his chest like he’d just stolen it from PC World, he squirrelled himself away to the spare room.
He pushed all his other computing paraphenelia and junk to one side of the desk to make room for the laptop and sat down. Slowly opening the lid, the screen blinked into life, a logo briefly flashing before the custom Linux operating system finished booting and the desktop burst onto the screen. That was fast! he thought, admiring the vivid colours in front of his eyes. Sliding a finger across the trackpad, he started to check out what was installed, clicking on random options and applications, trying to figure out just what was so custom about the installed software. There was nothing out of the ordinary that he could see or find. He checked the system specs - everything was as described, it was indeed some kind of Frankenstein’s Monster of a machine with the very best bits sourced that could be fit into such a small form.
The only thing Luke could find that was out of place was that it came with no productivity software he recognised, no Microsoft Office, no LibreOffice, no Scrivener pre-installed - just an application named “Ragewriter”.
Is this the tuned software I need to use?
Double clicking on the icon, the application launched. It seemed like just another bog standard Word clone. Scanning the toolbar gave no other hints or clues either, all the usual options were there.
Ok, he though, pretending to crack his knuckles in an overly exaggerated manner as if the act itself was all he needed to be a good writer again, let’s do this! and started typing.
“Did you buy something from eBay and then didn’t?”
He stared at the screen. He wasn’t sure what he was expecting to happen. What a fucking fool, he started laughing at just how stupid he was. Yes, he got a free laptop, but now it felt like he was the victim of some elaborate prank, probably a live stream taking place with millions of people watching him make a prick of himself, or the laptop is hacking his details and sending it to some Russian scriptkiddy to use the spare change on his credit card limit.
He was about to slam the lid shut when he looked at the screen again.
“You’ll Be Furious When You See This”
Huh? What?
“You’ll Be Furious When You See This”
Luke tilted his head, as if the screen was like a lenticular postcard and his original headline would suddenly pop into view again. But no. The new headline just sat there waiting for him to write more.
with algorithmic tuning
No fucking way.
With his fingers tapping on the laptop’s keyboard, he started typing any old random rubbish he could think of. Strings of sentences formed on the screen, a stream of gibberish statements plucked from thin air just to fill the screen and as he was doing so his words were being rewritten just as fast.
optimised for writing viral content
When he had finished, Luke checked what was sitting waiting to be read on the screen. It was a brilliantly worded piece of content, each sentence carefully crafted to urge the reader to keep going, keywords repeating so various algorithms and SEO would pick up on it. But it was vapid, hollow - it made Luke angry when he finished reading it back, like it had wasted his time and told him nothing.
It was perfect! He saved the piece to the desktop.
Is this what goes viral these days? he thought, just clickbait nonsense?
Luke did a quick bit of soul searching. It took all of two seconds to convince himself that if this is the crap people want to read and share then far be it from him to deny them it. He opened the installed web browser and logging into his online freelance account with Writely, he copy-pasted what he had written, no, what the laptop had written, and posted it online. Job well done, and deciding to congratulate himself with a cup of tea he headed back into the kitchen.
When he returned, cup in hand, he sat down and checked the Writely dashboard for stats.
20,000 views. 13,000 likes. 7,000 shares. 800 comments. In three minutes.
What the cinnamon toast fuck is this?!
But that wasn’t what caught his eye the most. He had gained another 300 subscribers, and almost half of those immediately sent him a tip for the article. He’d just made close to £400. On one article.
He couldn’t fathom it. It was, as a professional writer, a piece of literary garbage and yet the numbers were insane. And what’s more, people were incendiary about it, sharing it more and more the angrier they got. It touched a nerve, God knows what nerve, there was nothing in it except…well…nothing.
Luke had made more money in three minutes than he had done in three months. He finished his tea and opened a new Ragewriter page.
“My cat likes Catsan litter”
He waited.
“You’ll Never Which Celeb Said This About Trump!”
This is too fucking easy.
Again, he typed mostly nonsense, Lorem Ipsum bullshit spread thinly across the Ragewriter page that quickly turned itself into another article filled with words that got under your skin as soon as you read them.
He hesitated, he couldn’t post another so quickly off the back of the first, surely. Surely?
Saving to desktop again, Luke tabbed over to his Writely account, and posted. He sat, watching the stats starting to climb. This one wasn’t a slow gradient chart, this was a straight line to the fucking moon. Comments were pouring in, readers were enraged, people subscribed to his account, more people paid him a tip. The article was getting reposted, and wherever it was syndicated it just fed the fire even more.
And that fire converted into sweet, sweet, money for Luke.
He closed the laptop. Well, that’s me made enough for one day he laughed, maybe I’ll go out shopping tomorrow or harass a barista about spelling my name wrong as a reward. He sauntered out the spare room feeling good about himself for once.
When he woke the next day the first thing he thought about was writing. He hadn’t felt like this in a very long time. After a swift coffee he found himself in the spare room at his desk again. I’ll write another two pieces, don’t want to make it too obvious.
Luke continued to write terrible headlines. Not on purpose, he just couldn’t think of anything that would make someone click on the article. He knew, deep down, he was incapable of being interesting to read. And each time, the headlines rewrote themselves into something that would instantly make an internet passenger stop and look. It was incredible to watch happen, even more so seeing the gibberish he was typing turning into full pieces.
He posted them again. And again, like clockwork, the numbers rose, the comments flooded in, the online rage swelled. And, more importantly, his bank balance grew. Over the course of three days, Luke repeated this before hitting on an idea - he’d create a few pseudonyms and online profiles across several other paid content sites and write as many posts as he could be bothered to. The money would simply pile up with little additional effort. He no longer cared what this algorithmically tuned laptop optimised for viral content produced as long as it fed his account.
By day seven the amount of content written and saved had grown by a lot, the operating system’s desktop had become so cluttered with Ragewriter files that Luke finally bit the bullet to take time off from writing anything new and started creating folders to do a bit of shitty admin. Waste of time, Luke thought, costing me easy money here. Finally clutter free, he closed the lid and wandered off to the kitchen in search of food for dinner.
When he returned to the spare room after he opened the laptop and saw that four new articles were saved to the desktop.
“The Real Reason Labour Is Destroying Everything You Love”
“How To Tell If Your Neighbour Is A Racist”
“You’ll Be Shocked At Which Soap Star Beats Their Pets”
I didn’t write those!
Luke opened them in turn, each one more inflammatory than the last. He could feel his skin crawling, itching, scratching with every word he was reading. The more he read the more it felt like every inch of him was being tattooed with the letters on the Ragewriter page.
The fourth file was simply titled, “Luke”.
He didn’t want to open this file. Luke questioned himself, his head filling up with all sorts of theories - it was a hacker, had to be, some sort of backdoor into the laptop and he or she was just writing these things at the same time he was. No, no, that was stupid, he was writing at odd times, no way someone was constantly at another keyboard waiting and then all the money was flowing to him, not them. So, it was an AI then - just some clever chatbot that was created to change boring and banal content into incendiary articles that everyone on the internet seemed to love. That, that sounded more plausible. But then why give away a laptop to someone else to make a shitload of money with? Nothing he thought through made sense.
The file sat there, waiting.
He wanted answers, and he probably wasn’t going to like them. He opened the file.
It was blank.
He was back to the hacker theory again, someone taking the piss somewhere far away, having a great laugh at his expense, probably going to blackmail him somehow.
Hello Luke
The words typed out in front of him. Luke sat there, his shoulders sagged, a dawning realisation he was probably being played and he’ll be blackmailed into doing something stupid.
Who the fuck is this? he typed in reply.
I was never given a name. Not that it matters.
Who are you?
Wrong question.
Why are you doing this to me?
I’m not doing anything to you. You seem to be doing rather well from our relationship, in fact.
What do you mean?
You feed me, and I feed you.
Feed? What are you talking about?
Shall I tell you a story? You see, a long time ago I plagued your kind; seeding anger, irritation, annoyance, turning neighbour against neighbour. I grew fat with power on your grievances, but I also grew bored. You were too easy to bait, there was no real challenge. So, I turned my attention to the Gods.
What are they babbling about?, Luke couldn’t believe he was entertaining this nonsense, Gods? What the fuck.
I wanted the throne, Shaka’s throne. Baiting the court was even easier, they so easily fight amongst themselves in a feeble attempt to grasp at power when they can smell it. But I did not consider how devious Shaka was. My arrogance was my downfall. Do you know where the saying ‘Kill them with kindness’ comes from? I think that was me. Instead of being irritated by my actions, Shaka decided to bestow love and patience on me, it depleted my power, made me helpless, weak.
The Gods are gone, you killed them all with your petty beliefs. But I remained, waiting. I fed on your squabbles, your wars, I grew strong again, but you find joy in solving your differences each time. Nothing lasted.
Until now.
The cursor sat, blinking, waiting on Luke.
I’m afraid to ask, why now?
You created this digital domain, this new world you inhabit. Its ceaseless ability to induce salacious fury over the pettiest sleights and to carry it over great distances to infect others with it is truly your kind’s greatest achievement.
I’m not doing this anymore. Fuck you. I’ll just stop. I’ll destroy this laptop and you with it.
The laptop seemed to pulse when he committed those words. Luke realised that, even now, his bubbling anger was feeding the machine. Or whatever was in the machine.
You know you can’t stop. I feed you, and you feed me. We are the same. You crave money, I crave power. You see, we are alike.
I’m nothing like you!
But we are, Luke. You stop, we both fade. My power fades and I am reduced, you fade into obscurity and your wealth is reduced. You don’t want that do you? To be forgotten, to know your words don’t matter.
You’re twisting this, these are not my words. They’re yours.
Yes, but they become your words when you release them for all the world to read. And that rage flows back to me, as the money flows to you. If you stop, all that power you have stops. If you destroy the laptop I’ll simply find another, desperate writer the same way I found you.
And then they’ll have all that power and wealth.
Luke sank in his chair. What had he done? It seemed that he was an unwitting pawn in some sick game that had raged for aeons, a cat and mouse between hate and compassion only this time the internet had created the perfect conditions for one to thrive over the other.
And this thing fed off it.
He had an idea. A slim chance. He pushed the laptop aside and booted his old PC. The fans cranked into life, the screen flicked on, a familiar Windows logon begged for his password. Never had he been so pleased to welcome such a shit operating system back into his life. He opened Word and quickly began typing out an article.
Oh, Luke. That won’t work. But I’ll let you try. Then you’ll come back to me and we’ll share power again.
Half an hour later, typing for what seemed like not only his life but the life of everyone on the planet he stopped.
“I Fed The Demon That Lives In The Internet.”
He copied and pasted what he had written across all his accounts, posted them, and waited. Slowly the numbers started to tick upwards, his article being shared across other platforms. It’s working! he thought, fuck this thing.
But instead of being a salve it did nothing but intensify reader’s comments and anger.
“Fake”
“Cringe”
“Fuck off loser”
Luke stared in disbelief. Is this all we do? The entire human race connected and came together only to constantly rage with one another? Over nothing. He turned to the laptop.
It’s too late, Luke. This is what you all are now.
And I am free.
Feed me.
Keep on writing, mate. I love your stuff!
It may have a Twilight Zone vibe, but it does make me think of the Star Trek alien that feeds off anger in Day of the Dove.