Did the Illuminati Try to Recruit Me?

I opened my Bluesky account for the first time.

The first interaction was a DM claiming I was “chosen to join the Illuminati.”

Fresh account. Zero posts. Yet somehow I was already “chosen.”

The profile showed thousands of followers with vague mystical content. They asked for my name.

I replied:

I am the source.

A few minutes later, the account disappeared.

So… was it real?

🕯️ The Real Illuminati

• Originated in 1776 Bavaria
• A secret society promoting reason, not ritual
• Disbanded by the 1780s
• No hooded figures controlling Spotify playlists

🤖 What Actually Happened

A scam. Classic social engineering:

• Ego bait (“you were chosen”)
• Data gathering (“what’s your name?”)
• Likely leading to spiritual manipulation or money requests

But wait. What if it wasn’t a scam?

What if that was a real person who genuinely believed they were recruiting for some modern-day secret society? What if the internet has created so many echo chambers that people actually think they’re part of the Illuminati?

The account disappeared after I replied. Was it a bot that got confused by my response? A human who realized I wasn’t playing along? Or something else entirely?

The internet is so weird. You can never be sure what’s real anymore.

The Systems We Built

I worked for marketing agencies during the early days of digital marketing. We had direct access to Facebook and most major companies at their inception. I helped build systems that measured human engagement as metrics. The stated goal was “connecting people” while algorithms were designed to maximize time spent scrolling.

The systems function as designed:

• Scam accounts drive engagement metrics
• Bot interactions inflate user numbers
• Algorithmic manipulation is called “personalization”
• Addiction patterns are called “user retention”

The internet has evolved into a marketplace where attention is currency and authenticity becomes an optimization problem.

Economic pressure has created conditions where real humans behave like bots. The system wasn’t corrupted — it was built to serve capitalist needs.

Is the Internet Dead?

People keep saying the internet is dead. But what does that even mean?

The internet isn’t dead. It’s been optimized to death.

What we’re seeing isn’t the death of the internet — it’s the death of the internet we thought we were building. The one that would connect us, inform us, liberate us.

Instead, we got an attention marketplace where every interaction is a transaction. Where algorithms feed us exactly what keeps us scrolling, not what makes us think.

The internet isn’t dead. It’s just not what we promised it would be.

What the actual fuck is going on? We built a system that treats human attention as a commodity and wonder why it feels soulless.

Final Thought

The real Illuminati isn’t some shadowy cabal.

It’s the engineers who built systems that prioritize everything except genuine human connection. Food for thought.