PRAGMATIC ISSUES

The documentary Breakdown (1975) is not nostalgic comfort viewing.

It is a rebuke.

The documentary captures a period when political anger did not end with expression but moved, slowly and relentlessly, toward consequence. Organizing was physical. Pressure was sustained. People showed up repeatedly, often anonymously, and often at personal cost. There were no metrics to reward them, no audience to flatter them, and no illusion that being seen was the same as being effective.

That distinction matters now more than ever.

In the 1970s, activism required friction. Meetings, labor actions, court challenges, boycotts, voter drives, and relentless local pressure. It was boring, time-consuming, and frequently unsuccessful before it worked.

Today, we have replaced that model with what passes for participation in the algorithmic age, posting.

Algorithm activism is not civic engagement.

It is emotional outsourcing.

Social media platforms reward intensity, not accuracy. They amplify fear, outrage, and identity signaling because those emotions keep users scrolling. What they do not reward is follow-through. The result is a culture where political concern is performed publicly but rarely translated into sustained, real-world action. Visibility has replaced impact.

This has consequences, and we can see them clearly in the rise of misinformation-driven pseudo-activism across major platforms, particularly TikTok.

In recent months, viral narratives have claimed that:

• the CIA secretly tracked and controlled “gate kids” in the 1990s, that ended in the 60’s and involved no kids, ever.
• CERN has openly admitted it can open portals to other dimensions. They in fact, never have admitted to that.
• unnamed Eastern European research projects are suppressing discoveries about interdimensional beings. A combination of folklore and story telling, at best.

None of these claims are supported by evidence. The “gate kids” narrative is a distorted remix of Cold War–era parapsychology experiments like Project Stargate, which ended in the 1990s and concluded with no actionable results. The gate kids story combines imagination spanning from MKUltra or the CIA’s Gateway study.

CERN has repeatedly and publicly denied claims that the Large Hadron Collider can open portals or threaten reality itself.

These myths persist not because they are credible, but because they are algorithmically profitable.

Sources:

• CIA, Project Stargate Final Report (1995)
• CERN public statements and FAQs on LHC safety
• American Psychological Association analyses on misinformation and conspiratorial thinking

These stories do not mobilize people to challenge power.

They immobilize them in cult like fashion.

They redirect legitimate fear, mental illness and dissatisfaction away from institutions, policy, and material conditions and toward fantasy enemies and hidden forces.

Belief becomes a substitute for action.

Sharing becomes a stand-in for organizing.

Meanwhile, the same people claiming to be alarmed about authoritarianism, democratic erosion, or economic collapse rarely engage in the unglamorous work that actually constrains power.

There are no sustained campaigns, no local infrastructure building, no pressure applied where it matters most.

There are posts.

Endless posts.

Endless misinformation.

The irony is cruel.

If democracy were truly on the brink in the way many claim, posting would be the least rational response imaginable. Historically, moments of real crisis produce escalation, not commentary.

They produce labor movements, legal offensives, mass noncompliance, and coordinated local takeovers.

What we have instead is content.

This is not because people are apathetic. It is because platforms have trained users to mistake emotional expression for participation.

Algorithms create the illusion of involvement while safely containing dissent within monetized feedback loops.

Outrage is not suppressed.

It is harvested.

Breakdown reminds us what has been lost.

Not moral clarity, but discipline. Not passion, but patience.

The understanding that political change is cumulative, not viral.

If you believe reposting is resistance, you do not actually believe the crisis you describe.

Real activism is inconvenient, slow, and rarely rewarding.

It does not care about your engagement metrics or your audience.

The truth is this, the system is not threatened by your posts.

It feeds on them.

Until outrage costs something again, nothing changes.