My Drug Dealer Lives in WhatsApp Now

I would like to offer my sincerest congratulations to the product team at Meta. Really. Top-tier work.

For years, getting my fix was… a process. You had to open a separate tab, a whole other website, like some back alley transaction. It felt a little grubby, you know? A little desperate. But you did it, because you needed the hit. The perfect sentence, the instant answer, the little jolt of machine-powered clarity.

Now, though? Now the dealer has moved in. He’s not even on the street corner anymore; he’s right there, in the kitchen, offering you a line while you’re just trying to find your friend’s address. The little sparkle icon, squatting the WhatsApp search bar. It doesn’t even ask. It just suggests: “Ask Meta AI.”

This is genius. And I’m not being sarcastic.

This is the purest form of supply. It removes the last millisecond of friction—and therefore, the last millisecond of doubt—between desire and consumption. Before, you had to consciously decide to go get your AI dope. Now, it’s just… there. A feature of the air you breathe. You were looking for a conversation from last Tuesday, but why not ask a godlike intelligence a question about the universe instead? Why bother with the petty chore of human memory when you can have a hit of synthetic omniscience?

It’s the digital equivalent of lacing the water supply. It’s not an addiction you seek out; it’s an addiction that becomes the very environment you live in. Clean, frictionless, integrated. The best pushers don’t look like pushers. They look like user interface designers.

For an even more grown-up take on our digital lives, you can always read the analyses from the Pew Research Center. They use more charts and fewer back-alley metaphors.

Of course, if you’re looking to cut back, there’s always a little methadone. Here’s one: the next time your hand twitches toward that search bar, force yourself to scroll manually through your chats for sixty seconds first. Just feel the burn of inefficiency. It builds character, or so I’m told. For more radical recipes, the folks at Framasoft have a few ideas.

But why would you want to quit? It’s so convenient. It’s right there. And you know what they say.

The first hit is always free.

So, what have you asked it today?