You hate what you see in your feed. The outrage bait, the conspiracy theories, the content designed to make you angry enough to engage. But you keep scrolling. Welcome to 4chan—it just doesn’t call itself that anymore. Greg Fish, a computer scientist who’s spent years studying internet culture, argues that the infamous anonymous message board didn’t die—it metastasized into every platform you use daily.

The conversation reveals a disturbing evolution: 4chan was a place where trolls played games with misinformation, fully aware they were lying. Today’s social media took that playbook and made it sincere. Greg walks through how platforms engineer your feed to maximize engagement, not truth—filling your screen with suggested posts and ads instead of updates from people you actually care about. Shane’s Instagram reality: 9 out of 11 posts aren’t from his followers. The spicy chicken sandwich analogy lands hard: a little spice is exciting, but when everything is covered in ghost pepper sauce, you lose the ability to taste anything real.

Learn why we’ve been systematically desensitized to content that should shock us—and why that desensitization is a feature, not a bug. Understand how the loss of control over your feed mirrors the loss of control over what you’re exposed to, and why that matters more than you think. Greg explains the cultural gap between handling provocative content and being force-fed it by algorithms with no philosophical guardrails.

GUEST:Greg Fish | cyberpunksurvivalguide.com

Originally aired on2026-01-07