X marks the spot—but the treasure is a trap.
In mathematics, ‘X’ is the unknown variable. In pop culture, it’s the edge of the map (X-Files, SpaceX). In 2023, Elon (“Lonnie”) Musk rebranded Twitter as ‘X,’ collapsing its identity into a single, hungry glyph. This is no coincidence. ‘X’ has always been humanity’s hieroglyph for the void—and now, as AI, pandemics, and algorithmic chaos accelerate, we’re discovering that the void is alive. It’s replicating.
X is us.
The X-Files of History
“X” is humanity’s oldest inside joke—a symbol that winks at our fear of the unknown.
For centuries, ‘X’ has been shorthand for the unexplored, the unspoken, the dangerous. Algebra’s “solve for X” teases discovery. Pirates buried treasure under X, knowing the mark alone would lure greedy souls. Pharmacies marked poison vials with X, skulls grinning below the label like a deathbed confession. Hollywood slapped X on forbidden films, weaponizing its taboo. Pulp serials promised ‘Planet X’—a ‘50s sci-fi fantasy where Earth’s origins lay with raygun-wielding aliens from a mysterious planet. But in the 21st century, X, the self-replicating mark, has metastasized.
SpaceX rockets pierce the heavens. Generation X became a cultural battleground. Elon Fuck’s X.ai aims to “understand the universe.” And Twitter, once a blue bird chirping inanity, is now X—a black hole sucking identity, context, and truth into its event horizon—”to be the collective consciousness of humanity, or, more accurately, the human-machine collective.”
This isn’t branding. It’s a human funeral factory—and X is the logo on its coffins.
X as Hieroglyph of Hubris
“X” is where ambition meets oblivion.
Ancient myths whispered warnings we’ve ignored. Icarus fell from the sun. Prometheus’ stolen fire became his eternal torture. Pandora’s curiosity unleashed suffering. These parables of hubris now wear Silicon Valley logos. The tech world’s creed—“move fast and break things”—is our waxen wings, our unbound chains, our opened box.
Elon Fucks-A-Lot and his X platform is a void dressed as innovation, a monument to humanity’s fatal flaw: the belief that we can colonize the unknown without being colonized in return. Like Prometheus 2.0, we’ve snatched fire from the gods—AI, quantum computing, genetic editing—and branded it “progress.” But the gods are not mocked. Every X bears a hidden tax.
Jeff VanderMeer’s prophetic 2014 novel Annihilation weaponizes this mythic dread. The novel’s “Area X” devours explorers, dissolving their bodies and memories into surreal hybrids. A biologist discovers her husband’s doppelgänger—a hollow mimic, better and worse than the man she loved. The horror crawls from the swamp, drips from the trees. It rises from the biologist’s reflection in Area X’s cracked mirror—a mimic with her face, her memories, her hunger to burn what it copies. Like Musk’s X, like Pandora’s box, like Prometheus’ flame, it reflects our fatal urge to pry open doors marked “Keep Out.”
We built this. We thought we could control it. We were wrong.
Mimetic Apocalypse Engine
“X” is the virus we invited into our bloodstream.
French philosopher René Girard warned that desire is mimetic—we want only what others want—sparking rivalries that escalate into dire violence. Enter X (né Twitter), where algorithms pit us against doppelgängers of our own making. Conspiracy theories? AI deepfakes? Viral outrage? All are self-replicating marks, X’s progeny.
In VanderMeer’s Annihilation, explorers confront doubles of loved ones—spouses, colleagues—hollowed out and remade by Area X. These mimics aren’t just clones; they’re improvements, stripped of doubt, fear, and mercy. Fast-forward to 2024, and the doppelgänger has escaped fiction. It’s in your feed, your Zoom calls, your DNA.
Fuck's X is a conveyer belt for our digital doubles. Every tweet you post, every click you linger on, every rage-stoked reply aren’t just data points. They’re cells in a new organism, a data-doppelgänger that outlives, outperforms, and outdesires you. Deep Seek doesn’t write poems—it writes you, cannibalizing your words to birth a synthetic self that laughs, mourns, and lies with your voice.
COVID was the warm-up act. The pandemic cracked society’s mask—revealing how fast a single ‘X’ (a virus, a lie, a panic) can unstitch us. Now meet the headliner: AI that speaks in your voice, drones that march in your skin, algorithms that fuck with your dreams. We aren’t battling rivals anymore—we’re battling photocopies. Call it imitation? Try identity theft, universe edition. Girard warned us: when the copies win, the original dies. Guess which one we’ll throw on the pyre.
The horror isn’t that the doppelgänger will replace us.
The horror is that we’re paying it to.
The Self-Replicating Mark
“X” is a snake eating its tail.
The X logo isn’t a letter—it’s an ouroboros. The platform’s rebrand erased 17 years of history, replacing it with a symbol that means everything and nothing. Users now float in a void where fact and fiction merge, where your data-doppelgänger (likes, retweets, bot clones) is more “real” than you.
This is X’s endgame: a self-replicating loop of human craving. AI models boasting ‘self-awareness’ and ‘ethical principles’—grand promises sold as humanity’s salvation—train on the same biases, rage, and lust that birthed them, vomiting back our flaws as some synthetic scripture. Deepfakes clone our faces. Twitter’s X feeds on our attention, rewarding rage, lust, and fear.
We built X to conquer the unknown. Instead, the unknown conquered us.
Escaping X
The way out starts with a question: What if we stopped feeding the void?
In Annihilation, the biologist survives by surrendering to Area X’s alien logic. She doesn’t defeat the void—she becomes it. X is the ultimate blackpill—a self-replicating nihilism engine. Every doomscroll, every drone clone, every viral lie is a brick in our collective tomb. But there’s a lesson in it: Tombs can be cracked. To escape X, we must first admit we’re complicit in its growth. Now, go grab your fucking hammer and obliterate it.
Rejecting mimetic rivalry ain’t gonna be easy, that’s for sure. Just look at TikTok dance crazes metastasizing into global copycat cults, or Twitter pile-ons where 10 million strangers suddenly hate the same person for 24 hours. Instead, ignore the algorithm’s siren song—the one screaming ‘viral or die’—and value nuance over the dopamine hit of a million retweets. See AI clones as wind-up toys, not rivals. Most of all, remember that X isn’t a force of nature.
We drew the mark. We can erase it. (Or at least stop licking the ink.)
“X marks the spot where humans buried their humanity.
Dig there, and you’ll find only a mirror.”
Don’t look away. More from Don’t Flinch
Powerful. You are cooking! I remember when I first heard of the dead Internet theory I assumed it was a paranoid delusion. But around 4 years ago I noticed millions of people behave, speak and regurgitate non-sense to support a narrative. Just as bots might. But then I noticed how much worse it was. I recently read a comparison of people to Quantum particles. They don't exist in any position until an observer is introduced. And if you watch people you can see them desperately seek observers to validate their existence.
I am not comfortable using those desperate people's need for existence as wind up toys to validate my own existence. But what is the alternative? I spent a career in US Army PSYOP doing just that, only instead of on my own behalf, I was a tool doing it on behalf of the empire. If I can influence people by confirming they exist, I want to try and make sure it is in a positive way. I will be your wind up toy. And you be mine. And we will do it with good intentions.
I really enjoy reading your writings! Keep it up.