Good Sheep

A Note Before We Begin

This essay might trigger you. If it does, please stop reading rather than lashing out at the messenger. Let me be clear: I enjoyed my Universal Studios experience. My daughter loved it. We spent 9:30am to 5pm and only got on two rides - the second queue we waited in for over 40 minutes before the machine broke down right in front of us. I wish I was making this up for dramatic effect, but that’s exactly what happened. My daughter still had a magical day, and I’m glad we went. This essay is not about you or me personally. It’s not about individual experiences or personal choices. It’s not an attack on anyone who enjoys theme parks, fast food, or pre-recorded concerts. This is observational analysis - a report on systems and patterns that exist regardless of how any individual feels about them. I’m not “flaunting about being better” or claiming moral superiority. I participate in these systems too. I’ve eaten the fast food, waited in the lines, enjoyed the algorithmic playlists. The point isn’t to shame anyone for finding pleasure in these experiences - the point is to examine what these systems are doing to us collectively. The fact that people derive genuine pleasure from these experiences doesn’t invalidate the systemic critique. In fact, as you’ll see, that pleasure is often part of the mechanism itself. We can acknowledge that something feels good while also examining what it’s doing to us collectively. So let’s talk shop, shall we?

The Moment of Recognition

There I was, standing in a cattle chute disguised as a theme park line, having paid $36 just to park, waiting 2.5 hours for a 5-minute ride that turned out to be a glorified rocking chair with AR sprinkled on top. Thank the Universe this particular queue had air conditioning - in other parks you have to brave it out in the sun, and the little ones love that shit… oh wait, nevermind, parents just give them phones and tablets so they stay chill while slowly cooking. Which is a topic for yet another essay. When the third Universal employee asked if I’d checked my daughter’s height - after I’d already said yes twice - something snapped into focus.

We are sheep. Not metaphorically. Literally.

We pay premium prices to be herded through corporate processing systems designed to extract maximum revenue from minimum experience. We accept treatment that would be considered borderline inhumane if applied to actual livestock. And somehow, we’ve been convinced this is normal. This is freedom. This is fun.

But the most disturbing part? People genuinely enjoy it. They leave Universal Studios happy. They post smiling photos on social media. They plan return visits. Just like they smile while consuming food that’s slowly poisoning them, celebrate convenience that’s destroying their health, and feel grateful for systems that are systematically degrading their bodies and minds.

The sheep machine isn’t just processing our time and money - it’s processing our bodies, our health, our very life force. And we’ve learned to love every minute of it.

Universal Studios was just the moment of clarity. The sheep machine is everywhere, and it’s been running for over 150 years. And we’ve been conditioned to love our own systematic abuse.

Whenever you are ready Lord, take us all

The Taste of Our Own Destruction

Walk into any chain restaurant and taste the rancid oil they’ve been using for weeks. Feel that soggy texture, bite into that flavorless mass-produced burger, experience that chemical aftertaste that lingers for hours. Your body is literally telling you “this is harmful.” But we’ve been conditioned to accept systematic poisoning as normal food because it’s cheap, fast, and convenient.

We pay money to consume something that actively degrades our health while calling it a “meal.” We smile while ingesting food-like products engineered in laboratories, optimized for shelf life and profit margins rather than nutrition or flavor. We feel grateful for the convenience of drive-throughs that serve us substances that barely qualify as edible.

Meanwhile, a chef who sources quality ingredients, changes their oil regularly, takes time to develop flavors, creates dishes that nourish rather than just fill - we’re told their prices are “elitist” and “pretentious.” But the elite will stay eating the healthy stuff, even if it’s “pretentious”, curious. The system has flipped the script: they’ve made us, the regular people, feel guilty for wanting actual quality and grateful for accepting systematic degradation. What would’ve taken Universal to give something, anything, to those people who waited there 2+ hours (?), no no no, pay me. We pay for that… Wild!!!

This is the sheep machine at its most literal. We’re not just being processed like livestock - we’re being treated and fed like livestock. Cheap, bulk, engineered for rapid growth and maximum throughput, with no regard for long-term health or wellbeing.

The expensive meal isn’t overpriced - it’s what things actually cost when you don’t exploit workers, don’t cut corners on ingredients, and don’t optimize for profit over quality. The cheap food is artificially cheap because the real costs are hidden - environmental damage, worker exploitation, health consequences, cultural destruction of food traditions.

But wait - is fast food even cheap anymore? According to recent analysis, “you’ll be hard pressed to spend less than $20 no matter where you go” to feed a family of four at fast food chains. At Chick-fil-A, “two kids’ meals and two adult meals, plus fries for everyone, the final price is $40.72 without including drinks”. A 2024 survey found that “78% of consumers now consider fast food a ‘luxury’ purchase due to its increasing cost”.

Compare this to home cooking: a family of four can eat well for approximately $1,360 monthly on a moderate grocery budget - that’s about $45 per day for three meals for four people, or roughly $11.25 per meal. Meanwhile, “the average cost of a fast food meal now tops $10 in all major cities” - and that’s per person, for one meal of questionable nutritional value.

So we’re not even getting the “cheap” part anymore. We’re paying premium prices for systematic poisoning while being told it’s a good deal. McDonald’s prices “have doubled since 2014, with an average price increase of 100%” while wages certainly haven’t doubled.

We’ve been trained to think the exploitation price is the “real” price and the fair price is a ripoff. Just like we think 2-hour waits are normal and immediate access is a luxury upgrade. We, collectively, seem to keep lowering our standards???

The Pre-Recorded Reality

Around the same time I was having my Universal revelation, electronic music producer Eric Prydz was playing a pre-recorded Logic session to 15,000 people at Sónar festival. His CDJ allegedly failed, leaving “no choice” but to play back a fully rendered set with pre-synced visuals. The crowd cheered anyway.

This incident perfectly captures something profound about our current moment. We’ve normalized the replacement of authentic human experience with corporate-optimized simulation. Pre-recorded sets with synchronized visuals aren’t artistic choices - they’re cost-optimization strategies. Instead of paying skilled VJs to create reactive, live experiences, promoters run the same visual show on repeat across entire tours. Artists sign off because it “looks impressive” and ensures nothing goes wrong.

Except everything has gone wrong. Live music used to be about risk, about reading the room, about something actually happening in real time. Now it’s about syncing to a preset and cashing the check. We’ve traded spontaneity for efficiency, authenticity for scalability.

And we applaud. Because we’ve been trained to mistake packaging for content, production value for genuine experience. The audience has been conditioned to derive pleasure from their own deception.

The Engineering of Systematic Self-Abuse

This didn’t happen by accident. The systematic transformation of humans into willing participants in their own exploitation began in the 1880-1932s with American department stores. According to historian William Leach, there was a deliberate, coordinated effort by the “captains of industry” to detach consumer demand from needs (which can be satisfied) to wants (which remain perpetually unsatisfied).

Think about the genius of this shift. If you’re selling to human needs - food, shelter, clothing - there are natural limits. People get full, they have enough space, their clothes last. But if you can manufacture wants - status, identity, belonging, novelty - the market becomes infinite. You’ve created permanent dissatisfaction as a business model.

The food industry perfected this strategy. They shifted from selling nutrition (which satisfies hunger) to selling convenience, comfort, and identity. Fast food isn’t about feeding people - it’s about selling the idea that speed equals success, that processed equals progress, that artificial flavors equal authentic experience. They created permanent hunger for things that don’t actually nourish.

By 1919, Edward Bernays - the “father of public relations” - was successfully applying psychology and sociology to manipulate public opinion in favor of products like cigarettes and soap. The techniques weren’t subtle. They designed physical spaces to “loosen shoppers’ hold on reality and induce them into a trance-like state.” Department stores became baroque palaces with vaulted ceilings, skylights, and gilded angels - architectural psychology designed to make rational decision-making more difficult. Feels familiar? Helloooooooo?! The same principles now govern food courts, restaurant chains, and grocery stores, what else?! Warm lighting to make processed food look appealing. Strategic placement of high-margin junk at eye level. Psychological pricing that makes $4.99 feel dramatically cheaper than $5.00 (Hello, Black Friday or Amazon Prime day!). Every aspect designed to override your body’s natural ability to recognize what’s actually good for you.

Alfred Sloan at General Motors perfected the next phase with planned obsolescence and annual model changes. Why sell someone a car that lasts forever when you can sell them a new one every year? The shift was away from technological innovation toward manufacturing dissatisfaction with perfectly functional products.

The food industry adopted this model completely. Why make food that nourishes and satisfies when you can engineer products that trigger cravings for more? Why create meals that leave you feeling good when you can design food-like substances that create cycles of hunger, satisfaction, and renewed craving?

This is the foundation of everything that followed. We’re dealing with intentionally designed systems that transform humans into profit-extraction units while making them grateful for the experience.

The Digital Perfection of Loving Your Chains

Modern capitalism has perfected sheep-herding through algorithmic manipulation that makes us feel empowered while being completely controlled. Spotify is the perfect example - users believe they’re discovering music organically, but every “recommendation” is algorithmically steered to maximize engagement and revenue. The platform “allows a consumer to feel they are in control of their listening experience even as the Spotify machine co-creates and co-controls it.”

Digital marketers have resolved what should be an obvious contradiction between consumer manipulation and consumer empowerment by simply declaring them to be the same thing. Through what they call “hyper-relevance,” they’ve created a “fairytale vision of marketing where the algorithmic manipulation of consumers and consumer autonomy and empowerment become one and the same.”

This is psychological warfare (at the very least, psy-experimentation without direct consent… if you wanna stay ‘objective’) disguised as convenience. Every swipe, click, and pause gets analyzed to predict and modify your future behavior. You think you’re choosing what to watch, listen to, or buy, but you’re actually being guided through an increasingly sophisticated maze designed to maximize extraction while maintaining the illusion of agency. Hell, I couldn’t order my food at that place, I had to scan the thing, download the app, create an account, add my payment information to the app, then order, then I had to pick up the thing… $20 for pizza that costs $2 dollars to make (I MAKE PIZZA for my family reguarly), and on top of that $13 for a Bud Light… hello 1,000%+++ markup. Like… I don’t even know.

And here’s the crucial part: it feels good. The algorithms are designed to provide genuine pleasure, real satisfaction, authentic-feeling discovery. Users love their Spotify recommendations, their Netflix suggestions, their Instagram feeds. The manipulation works precisely because it delivers actual enjoyment.

Users love their Spotify recommendations, their Netflix suggestions, their Instagram feeds. The manipulation works precisely because it delivers actual enjoyment.

Social media amplifies this through manufactured herding behaviors. Phrases like “most popular,” “best-selling,” and “trending now” aren’t descriptions - they’re herding commands. Influencer marketing creates artificial social proof, while user-generated content provides free labor for corporate messaging. We’ve become unpaid employees in our own manipulation, and we love it.

The Physical Infrastructure of Willing Compliance

The sheep-herding operates through physical infrastructure designed to process humans like livestock while making them grateful for the experience:

Queue Psychology: We accept multi-hour waits as normal because everyone else is doing it. Disney perfected this by making the wait itself part of the “experience” - themed cattle chutes with estimated wait times that train us to accept delay as value. The psychology is simple: if you’ve already invested time, you’re less likely to leave. But more importantly, the shared suffering creates artificial community and makes the eventual payoff feel earned.

Retail Flow Design: Shopping centers are consciously designed to “manipulate shoppers’ behavior through the configuration of space” and create “symbolic landscapes that provoke associative moods and dispositions.” IKEA’s maze forces you through every department. Grocery stores put milk in the back so you walk past maximum products. Every aspect of retail space is engineered to reduce resistance to spending while making the experience feel pleasant and natural.

Subscription Treadmills: We no longer own anything - just endless monthly payments for access to content, software, and services. Like livestock paying rent to graze, we’re trapped in recurring revenue streams with no equity accumulation. Cancel your subscriptions and you lose access to everything immediately. But it feels convenient, modern, hassle-free.

Artificial Scarcity: “Limited time offers,” “while supplies last,” “exclusive access” - these create urgency around abundant products. The scarcity is manufactured to trigger purchasing decisions before rational evaluation can occur. But it feels exciting, special, like you’re getting access to something rare and valuable.

The Psychology of Perfect Sheep: When Abuse Feels Like Love

The most insidious aspect of modern sheep-herding is how it exploits fundamental human psychology while delivering genuine pleasure. This is what makes it so different from traditional abuse - and so much more effective.

Research shows that people engaging in self-destructive behavior “face the contradictory reality of harming themselves while at the same time obtaining relief from this act.” They get real pleasure from behavior that’s ultimately destroying them because “endorphins are released in response to self-harm… acting as natural painkillers and inducing pleasant feelings.”

The sheep machine operates on exactly this principle - genuine pleasure masking systematic erosion of authentic experience.

Status Emulation Cycles: There’s an endless hierarchy where “the poor strive to imitate the wealthy and the wealthy imitate celebrities.” This creates perpetual dissatisfaction - nobody ever reaches the top, everyone just keeps consuming in pursuit of imaginary social advancement. Celebrity endorsements aren’t about product quality; they’re about selling the fantasy of elevated status. But participating in this system feels aspirational, hopeful, like you’re improving yourself.

Herd Behavior Exploitation: Humans naturally follow crowd behavior for safety. Capitalism weaponizes this instinct through social proof marketing, creating artificial crowds around products and brands. If everyone’s buying it, it must be good. If everyone’s waiting in line, it must be worth it. But following the herd feels safe, social, like you belong.

False Choice Architecture: We’re given multiple options that all lead to the same outcome - consumption. Whether you choose Target or Walmart, Apple or Samsung, Democrat or Republican, you’re still participating in the same extraction system. The choices are real, but they’re all variations on the same theme. But having choices feels empowering, democratic, free.

Individualism as Isolation: Hyper-individualism prevents collective resistance. When everyone handles corporate abuse privately, there’s no unified pushback. Each person suffers alone rather than recognizing shared exploitation. We compete with each other instead of recognizing our common situation. But individualism feels like personal responsibility, self-reliance, strength.

The Cognitive Dissonance of the “Free”

The most perfect sheep are those who believe they’re wolves. Consider the “Don’t Tread On Me” crowd filling theme park parking lots - people who get furious about government overreach while docilely accepting corporate overreach. They’ll wait in line for hours, pay insane markups, get treated like livestock, and call it “the American way.” They would read this if they could and say I’m just salty about something or probably can’t afford these things, “that’s nothing to me… you are just a whiner” I would read in the comment sections, or worse…

This cognitive dissonance is deliberately cultivated. Capitalism has branded collective resistance as somehow un-American, while corporate manipulation gets framed as “market freedom.” The same people who would revolt against government-mandated 2-hour waits will cheerfully pay for the privilege when a corporation imposes them.

They’ll rage about taxes while paying 1,200% markups on beer. They’ll complain about government surveillance while carrying devices that track their every movement for corporate profit. They’ll protest government control while accepting algorithmic manipulation of their thoughts and preferences.

The genius is making compliance feel like rebellion, making submission feel like choice. When people buy fast passes to skip the artificial lines, they’re not escaping the system - they’re paying extra to participate in a premium tier of the same exploitation while feeling superior to those who can’t afford the upgrade.

When Does This Become Self-Abuse?

Let’s call this what it is: we’ve been conditioned into systematic self-destructive behavior. Not the clinical kind involving cutting or substance abuse, but what psychology defines as “any behavior that is harmful or potentially harmful towards the person who engages in the behavior” that becomes habitual.

Self-destructive behavior exists on a continuum and “may be deliberate, born of impulse, or developed as a habit.” What we’re experiencing through the sheep machine is the habitual form - patterns so normalized we don’t recognize them as harmful. The psychology literature shows that “childhood trauma contributes to the initiation of self-destructive behavior, but lack of secure attachments helps maintain it.”

Replace “childhood trauma” with “systematic corporate conditioning” and “lack of secure attachments” with “atomized individualism” and you have a perfect description of our situation.

Consider the psychological profile: People engage in self-destructive behavior because it “may act as a temporary distraction or way of coping with emotional distress, pain, or discomfort. However, the distraction does not last, and self-destructive behavior can become a dangerous habit over time.”

Sound familiar? We pay to wait in lines for hours because it temporarily distracts from the emptiness of our optimized lives. We consume pre-packaged experiences because they offer momentary relief from the anxiety of having to create meaning ourselves. We accept algorithmic curation because choosing feels overwhelming.

The sheep machine exploits the same psychological vulnerabilities that drive clinical self-destruction: the desire “to feel something, especially if they feel numb or empty,” “to block out painful memories or emotions,” and “to release unpleasant emotions such as anger, hopelessness or depression.”

BTW, whenever I bring this up in a group of normies, I will be attacked, I will trigger people, this topic is so touch-feely nasty, while we just should be objective and observe, and talk about what we see, experience, feel, think, a lot, plenty, we must talk about this shit!!

But here’s the crucial difference: clinical self-destructive behavior is recognized as harmful and treated. When it’s recognized right? We know how this song and dance goes. But ironically, Corporate-induced self-destructive behavior is celebrated as consumer choice and economic participation. What?!

Psychological abuse is characterized by “the systematic diminishment of another” and often involves withholding as a form of control. The sheep machine operates exactly this way - systematically diminishing our agency while withholding authentic experience unless we pay increasingly steep prices for increasingly hollow substitutes.

When you pay $13 for beer and wait 2.5 hours for a 5-minute ride, when you applaud pre-recorded concerts, when you let algorithms choose your music, you’re engaging in conditioned self-destructive behavior. When you eat the lies our systems, governments, and world leaders tell us when we are WATCHING HISTORY UNFOLD FOR OURSELVES. The immediate “relief” - the brief entertainment, the social belonging, the decision fatigue reduction - masks the long-term harm to your autonomy, your time, and your capacity for authentic experience.

Each acceptance of corporate overreach makes the next one easier. We’re being slowly poisoned, and we’ve learned to call it dining. The food’s getting worse, but we’ve forgotten what real nutrition tastes like.

Also, the “if you don’t like it, don’t go” defense misses the point entirely. This isn’t about individual venues or personal preferences. It’s about recognizing that we’ve built systems that systematically diminish human agency and dignity - including our most basic biological function of nourishing ourselves - then convinced people to celebrate their own diminishment.

The Evidence Is All Around Us

But how can it be abuse if everybody seems to be enjoying themselves? Look at the broader evidence:

Physical Health Crisis: Obesity rates have tripled since 1980. Diabetes is now epidemic. Food allergies and autoimmune disorders are skyrocketing. We have more access to “food” than ever before while being more malnourished than previous generations. The average American consumes 150 pounds of sugar per year - our bodies literally can’t process what we’re putting into them.

Mental Health Crisis: Teen depression rates have skyrocketed alongside smartphone adoption and social media engagement. Suicide rates are at historic highs. Anxiety disorders are epidemic. People report feeling more isolated despite being more “connected” than ever.

Attention Destruction: Average attention spans have dropped from 12 seconds to 8 seconds since 2000. People can’t sit through movies without checking their phones. We’ve been trained to crave constant stimulation while losing the capacity for sustained focus.

Relationship Dysfunction: Dating apps have turned relationships into consumer experiences. People swipe through potential partners like they’re browsing Netflix. Divorce rates remain high while marriage rates plummet. We’re treating human connection like a product to be optimized.

Economic Slavery: People work longer hours for less real purchasing power while celebrating “side hustles” and “grinding.” We’ve been convinced that having three jobs is entrepreneurship rather than exploitation.

Democratic Decay: Political discourse has been reduced to team sports optimized for engagement. Complex issues get flattened into viral content. We’re more politically active than ever while being less politically effective.

Metabolic Destruction: Chronic inflammation from processed foods is now linked to virtually every major disease. Our gut microbiomes - the foundation of physical and mental health - have been decimated by antibiotics, preservatives, and artificial ingredients. We’re literally changing the bacterial ecosystems that make us human.

Research on abuse victims shows they often “do not characterize the mistreatment as abusive” and may even “exhibit higher than average rates of alexithymia (difficulty identifying and processing their own emotions).” They’ve been conditioned to normalize the harm, to derive pleasure from their own exploitation.

That’s exactly what we see everywhere. The manipulation works precisely because it delivers actual enjoyment while systematically eroding our capacity for authentic experience, just like how endorphins make self-harm feel good in the moment.

The Human Cost of Loving Your Chains

Consider just Universal Studios: if 50,000 people visit daily, each waiting 2 hours per ride for 4 rides, that’s 400,000 human-hours spent standing in lines daily. Annually, that’s nearly 146 million human-hours of productive life surrendered to corporate processing efficiency.

Multiply this across every theme park, concert venue, retail experience, and digital platform, and we’re talking about billions of human-hours sacrificed to profit optimization. We’re literally paying companies to waste our lives, and we’re grateful for the opportunity.

But the psychological cost may be higher. When authentic experience gets replaced with optimized simulation, when spontaneity gets eliminated for efficiency, when human agency gets subsumed into algorithmic guidance, we lose something essential about what makes life worth living. We become consumers of our own existence rather than creators of it.

The most tragic part is how good it feels. The sheep machine has perfected the art of making systematic diminishment feel like enhancement, making control feel like choice, making exploitation feel like empowerment.

Why Individual Resistance Fails

The system has become sophisticated enough to monetize its own critique. Anti-consumerist sentiment gets packaged and sold back to us as “mindful consumption” and “ethical brands.” Even rebellion becomes a market segment.

When you choose the “authentic” coffee shop over Starbucks, you’re still participating in lifestyle branding consumption. When you “vote with your wallet,” you’re accepting that citizenship has been replaced with consumership. When you buy “sustainable” products, you’re still buying the solution to problems created by the same system.

Individual resistance is worse than useless - it’s part of the system. It provides the illusion of choice while maintaining the fundamental structure. The sheep machine doesn’t care which pasture you graze in, as long as you keep grazing. It doesn’t care if you pay for fast passes or wait in regular lines, as long as you accept that artificial scarcity is normal.

The “CCJ is just broke and bitter” response is classic deflection - making it about individual criticism rather than systemic analysis. It’s the same logic as “if you don’t like America, leave it” - avoiding the actual points by attacking the messenger.

The fast-pass mentality perfectly illustrates the problem: “I can afford to skip the abuse, so the abuse doesn’t exist.” But the fast-pass is part of the abuse system - paying extra to avoid the artificial suffering that shouldn’t exist in the first place. It’s like saying food poisoning isn’t real because some people can afford organic groceries. Everybody should be eating organic (I truly could care less about organic or the labels, MAKE THE FOOD HEALTHY!!).

Too Much Individualism Is Wrecking Us

Here’s the deeper insight: hyper-individualism itself is one of the sheep machine’s most effective tools. When everyone’s focused on their individual experience, their personal brand, their own optimization, it becomes impossible to collectively say “this is bullshit” and actually do something about it. Divide & Conquer I believe they called it earlier in human history.

Think about that Universal Studios line. Everyone in that 2.5-hour queue was probably having the same internal rage, but we’re all trained to handle it individually. Maybe complain to customer service as individuals, maybe post about it online individually, but not to turn to the person next to us and say “this is ridiculous, what if we all just left?”

We’ve been atomized into individual consumers rather than a collective audience with shared standards. And companies love this because it’s much easier to manage thousands of individual complaints than one unified “this isn’t acceptable” response.

The irony is that the experiences themselves - live music, theme parks, shared cultural moments - are supposed to be communal. But we’ve been trained to experience them in isolation, even when we’re surrounded by people having the exact same frustrations.

Individual resistance can’t work because the system absorbs and neutralizes it. Personal opt-outs become market segments. Your rebellion gets packaged and sold back to you.

What Breaking Free Actually Looks Like

Real resistance requires recognizing that this isn’t about individual choices or personal preferences - it’s about systematic conditioning into self-destructive behavior disguised as consumer empowerment. The sheep-herding infrastructure is too comprehensive for personal opt-outs to matter.

This means:

Collective Standards: Agreeing as communities what treatment we won’t accept, regardless of how good it makes us feel in the moment. Unions are the perfect example - workers coming together to say “we won’t accept unsafe conditions, poverty wages, or exploitation, no matter how the company frames it.” They set collective standards that individual workers couldn’t enforce alone.

Refusing Artificial Scarcity: Recognizing when “premium experiences” are just ways to monetize problems that shouldn’t exist

Demanding Genuine Value: Rejecting the premise that we should pay premium prices for artificially degraded experiences - whether that’s 2-hour waits or food that slowly poisons us

Reclaiming Time: Treating our life-hours as precious and refusing to surrender them to corporate processing efficiency

Authentic Experience: Seeking real human connection and creativity outside commercial channels - including real food made by real people who care about nutrition, not just profit

Shared Recognition: Talking to each other about what we’re experiencing instead of suffering in isolation

Supporting Real Craft: Paying fair prices for genuine quality - whether that’s a chef who sources good ingredients or an artist who creates live, unrepeatable experiences

Community Self-Reliance: Creating alternatives like communal gardens where people grow real food together, share knowledge and labor, and build relationships outside the extraction economy. These gardens show what’s possible when humans cooperate for mutual benefit rather than profit.

The sheep machine works because we’ve forgotten we have the power to walk away. To stop paying. To stop playing. These systems are the new Roman Colliseums, designed for… Anyways, when enough people stop accepting sheep treatment - even when it feels good, especially when it feels good - the whole system has to change. This is why the brigthest (and saddest, sadly, conscies does have a price) people I know are all advocating for macro approaches such as a general strike.

Companies can’t run cattle chutes without cattle. They can’t manufacture artificial scarcity without people accepting scarcity as normal. They can’t extract premium prices for hollow experiences without people believing hollow experiences are worth premium prices. They can’t poison us with engineered food-like products without us accepting that as normal nutrition.

Real chefs, like real artists, like real craftspeople, like union organizers, like community gardeners, represent what we’ve lost - humans creating something meaningful with skill, care, and genuine value. They’re not just making food or art or collective power; they’re refusing to participate in the systematic degradation of human experience. They’re showing us what authentic value looks like when it’s not optimized for extraction.

The Choice We Face

And these are just the examples off the top of my head - just the things I’m personally aware of because I’m only beginning to notice this pattern. I’m sure you’re aware of much, much more. As someone from Borinquén, I’m also seeing how these same mechanisms of systematic exploitation mirror colonialism and its ongoing effects. The sheep machine isn’t new - it’s the latest evolution of systems designed to extract value while convincing the exploited that their exploitation is for their own good.

This is intense shit. Once you start seeing it, you can’t unsee it.

We’re at a crossroads. We can continue accepting that this is just how things work - that corporate extraction is the price of modern life, that artificial experiences are good enough, that our time and dignity are commodities to be optimized, that feeling good about our exploitation makes it less exploitative.

Or we can remember that we’re not actually sheep.

We can recognize that the $13 beer, the 2.5-hour wait, the pre-recorded concert, the algorithmic manipulation, the subscription treadmills, the rancid oil, the filthy cruise ship cabins, the TSA gaslighting, and the endless processing are not natural forces. They’re design choices made by humans who profit from treating us like livestock while making us grateful for the experience.

Trust Your Gut and Stop Playing Along

Here’s my call to action: trust your gut and stop playing along with this bullshit.

When something feels wrong, it probably is wrong. When you’re being treated like cattle, you don’t have to moo along. When a system demands you accept abuse with a smile, you can refuse to smile.

This isn’t about cancelling a specific company or boycotting a particular brand. This is about cancelling EVERYTHING that treats you like livestock. This is about resisting the entire apparatus of systematic exploitation, no matter how much pleasure it promises, no matter how convenient it claims to be, no matter how normal everyone else thinks it is. Let’s resist this nonsense! Stop waiting in those lines. Stop paying those markups. Stop accepting that abuse. Stop pretending that exploitation is empowerment. Stop being grateful for the privilege of being processed.

Your instincts are right. Your body knows when food is poisoning it. Your mind knows when an experience is hollow. Your soul knows when you’re being diminished rather than nourished.

The sheep machine only works with our consent. And consent can be withdrawn, even when - especially when - the abuse feels good.

So withdraw it. All of it. Trust yourself. Resist everything. We’re not god-damned sheep.

---

📚 Research Sources & References

Academic & Theoretical Sources

Consumer Capitalism - Wikipedia
Comprehensive overview of consumer capitalism theory, tracing origins from 1850s department stores through Edward Bernays’ psychological manipulation techniques to modern mass-marketing systems designed to shift demand from needs to wants.

Manipulate to Empower: Hyper-relevance and the Contradictions of Marketing
Academic analysis of how digital marketers resolve the contradiction between consumer manipulation and empowerment by declaring them identical through “hyper-relevance” - essentially arguing that algorithmic control equals freedom.

Self-destructive Behavior - Wikipedia
Psychological analysis of behavior patterns that are harmful to the person engaging in them, including how such behaviors can become habitual and often provide temporary relief while causing long-term harm.

Psychological Abuse - Wikipedia
Definition and analysis of abuse that targets mental well-being through systematic diminishment, including how victims often don’t recognize mistreatment as abusive and may have difficulty processing their own emotions.

Childhood Origins of Self-destructive Behavior - PubMed
Clinical research showing how childhood trauma contributes to self-destructive behavior initiation while lack of secure attachments helps maintain such behaviors into adulthood.

Consumer Psychology & Behavior

Herd Behavior - Wikipedia
Detailed examination of how humans naturally follow crowd behavior and how this instinct gets weaponized through marketing, social media, and financial systems to drive consumption and compliance.

Consumerism - Wikipedia
Historical development of consumerism from the Industrial Revolution through modern celebrity culture, including analysis of emulation cycles and the deliberate engineering of consumer behavior.

What is Consumer Capitalism? - WorldAtlas
Accessible explanation of how consumer capitalism deliberately shifted demand from satisfiable needs to insatiable wants, creating permanent dissatisfaction as a business model.

Herding Instinct in Marketing
Practical guide to how marketers exploit natural human herding instincts through social proof, scarcity tactics, and influencer marketing to drive sales and shape consumer behavior.

On Consumer Capitalism - The School of Life
Philosophical examination of how department stores were designed as “baroque palaces of consumption” to induce trance-like states and the historical development of retail psychology.

Self-Harm & Mental Health Research

Self-harm - Wikipedia
Comprehensive overview of intentional self-harmful behavior, including how victims often experience relief from such acts due to endorphin release, creating cycles of harmful behavior that feels good.

What Are Self-Destructive Behaviors? - Healthline
Clinical explanation of behaviors that cause physical or emotional self-harm, including how they often serve as coping mechanisms that provide temporary relief while causing long-term damage.

Self-Destructive Behavior: What It Is & Why We Do It
Analysis of how self-destructive behaviors can become habitual responses to stress and emotional pain, often developing as maladaptive coping mechanisms.

Economic & Social Analysis

Consumerism and Capitalism - Brookings Institution
Policy analysis of how modern capitalism has moved toward “bigness” and corporate concentration, with discussion of when consumerism becomes problematic versus beneficial.

Economic Hoarding - Wikipedia
Technical explanation of how artificial scarcity gets created through hoarding and speculation, demonstrating systematic manipulation of supply and demand for profit extraction.

Abuse Recognition & Control Mechanisms

Types and Indicators of Abuse - SCIE
Professional guidance on recognizing various forms of abuse, including psychological and emotional abuse that involves intimidation, coercion, and systematic control.

Emotional and Psychological Abuse - WomensLaw.org
Legal and psychological framework for understanding abuse that uses non-physical behaviors to control, isolate, or frighten victims, often breaking down self-esteem to create dependency.

---

🎯 Key Terms Glossary

Sheep Machine - The systematic infrastructure of corporate manipulation designed to process humans like livestock while making them grateful for the experience.

Artificial Scarcity - Manufactured limitations on abundant products/services to create urgency and justify premium pricing.

Hyper-Individualism - Extreme focus on personal responsibility/choice that prevents collective resistance to systematic exploitation.

Algorithmic Manipulation - Using data analysis to predict and modify human behavior while maintaining the illusion of user choice.

Queue Psychology - The conditioning that makes people accept multi-hour waits as normal parts of “experiences.”

Status Emulation Cycles - Endless hierarchies where people consume to chase imaginary social advancement that’s always out of reach.

Corporate Processing - Treating humans as units to be optimized for profit extraction rather than individuals deserving dignity.

Subscription Treadmills - Recurring payment models that trap users in perpetual fees without ownership accumulation.

Fast-Pass Mentality - Paying extra to avoid artificial suffering that shouldn’t exist, while accepting the system that creates it.

Endorphin Exploitation - Systems that provide genuine pleasure from ultimately harmful behaviors, masking long-term damage.