endless feed (12. 216)

Having pinned the obsession with our devices and the dopamine hits that they provide to the allegory of Narcissus—and by extension a Sisyphean task—and thinking it went no further, we appreciated being able to expand the metaphor and look at the insatiable compulsion another way with what the Greeks proverbially describe as the “Tantalean punishment” ( Ταντάλειοι τιμωρίαι)—the mythological figure’s eponym synonymous not only with what’s tantalising, eternally tormented by the sight of something desirable but just out of reach but also for those who have good things but cannot enjoy them and teased with aroused expectations that fail to satisfy. Consigned to the lowest level of the Underworld, Tartarus, Tantalus is made to stand in a pool of inviting water with fruit-laden boughs just above his head, the refreshment sought to slake his thirst and quell his hunger receding from his grasp, as divine retribution for having abused the hospitality of the gods and stealing ambrosia and nectar from the table of the Olympians and bringing it back to his people—also for trying to test the gods’ omniscience by butchering his son and serving him to them, whom was later mostly reconstituted. The torture maps quite aptly with the addictive saturation of social media with unending scrolling and no clear exit point by design for finishing a conversation or the consumption of a piece of culture, with tributes, remixes and tangents. Fittingly, our tragic figure is also the namesake of the rare earth element tantalum, an essential component of smart phones and other electronics with some forty milligrams of the substance in the palm of one’s hand right now.