Fiction, cognitohazard
(Original format by @SuricrasiaOnline )
Septagram Internet Hazard Catalogue Entry 069 - [The α-disruption]
Hazard type: Memetic Infohazard
Vector: Discourse/Narrative
Danger: Non-lethal(mostly*)/Low-to-medium disruption
Range: Omnipresent
[*I mean, you can't prove that it isn't -OBL]
The α-disruption is a infovorous meme complex embedded in certain fictional and non-fictional narrative tropes. It has a viral spread in every community with acess to the internet.
Fiction, cognitohazard
The primary vector for the discursive variant is algorithm-enhanced social media use
and the primary vector for the narrative variant is █████ ███ ████████ ███████ ████████ █████████ ██ ████████ ██ █████████ █████████ ██████████ [censored for your protection by the Order of Blind Librarians]
Fiction, cognitohazard
Discursive stages:
1. A belief in the importance of libraries as a foundational element of civilization.
2. A preference for information stored on paper as opposed to digitally. Elevated distress at seeing books be pulped, burned or otherwise destroyed.
3. An impulse to acquire rare books.
Fiction, cognitohazard
Narrative stages:
1. An increased affinity for the works of Neil Gaiman, Terry Pratchett and Jorge Luis Borges
2. writing, imagining or consuming fictions featuring infinite or otherwise dreamlike and surreal libraries.
3. Sucessive withdraval from society, pathological book hoarding.
Fiction, cognitohazard
Websites dedicated to shared fiction projects involving libraries or other fictional archives of information are monitored and hidden from search engines during periods of peak virality.
A team of security experts and social engineers have been assigned to monitor book-related communities on social media and when necessery deploy inocculating discurso-memetic agents.
Fiction, cognitohazard
Mild-to-moderate levels of α-disruption is considered benign, even beneficial, and no attempt is to be made eradicate α-disruption. As long as infection is kept within acceptable levels, ██ ██ ██████████ ██ ██████████ ██████████ ██ █ █████ ██████ ██ ██████ ██ ███████ ████ ████, ███ ████ [censored for your protection by the Order of Blind Librarians] needs to be fed.
Fiction, cognitohazard
The α-disruption is terminal in 0.5% of discursive cases and █% of narrative cases. After infection, the subjects go through a number of stages over the course of 5-10 years, as enumerated below: