The Blog Post You Can't Skip

Prologue

I have come to observe a most humiliating truth, brought on by a chronic lack of engagements on my blog articles: the 15-second reel has, for some time now, been kicking the arse of my meticulously crafted articles.

One observes that among the myriad of modern digital rituals, there is perhaps none so peculiar as the one surrounding the "reel." This is, in one's observation, a widely consumed sensory narcotic that has been serving one quite a spectacular daily stomping on his plums. So, what happens when the simplistic simian video clip is hijacked by an unskippable advertisement?

Act I

Nothing frustrates homo sapiens' distant cousin more than the silent taunt of a loading circle daring him to terminate and restart. But what if that loading circle wasn't on a screen at all? What if it lived inside one's very own mind? This is the phenomenon of sleep paralysis: a connection issue so positively dreadful that while consciousness loads, the body is quite unable to play. It's a hellish, forced-viewing commercial from a mind that’s clearly gone for a quick leisurely tea time.

The horrifying, shadowy presence that looms over one's head... that is the unskippable advertisement—a poorly-fetched picture from a faulty algorithm that the system is forcing one to watch. All that can be done is to remain still, unable to press the "skip ads button," and wait for the Wi-Fi to finally stabilise.

Act II

The author is quite enthused, he must confess, to now turn to the glorious biological specifics of this phenomenon. He is well aware that a good many will be tempted to press the "skip" button on this particular section.

During sleep, the brainstem, in its wisdom, releases neurotransmitters that effectively inhibit motor neurons, a necessary bodily safeguard that prevents one from acting out their dreams. This inhibition of motor function is known as atonia.

The unfortunate incident of paralysis, then, is merely a timing anomaly. Consciousness returns to a state of wakefulness a fraction of a moment before this atonia has been properly concluded. That manifested phantasm, rather than being an immaterial malevolent being, is a simple, mundane hypnagogic hallucination—a spontaneous image generated by a brain that has only partially woken up.

TLDR (Too Long, Do Reel) for the Simian: Brain drugs body, body stops moving. Brain wakes up, body stuck.

Act III

And yet, a rather curious question still remains. While science has accounted for the biological mechanics of the paralysis, it has utterly failed to explain the content of the nightmare. Why, precisely, does that horrid pop-up consistently manifest an imaginary hostile presence?

The author must now posit a final, fundamental truth: that "being" is not a spiritual entity, but rather the subconscious mind's purest, most unadulterated disdain. It is begging you to wake up from all this silliness and make a meaningful contribution to humankind.

You have anomalously entered my realm. I am your sleep paralysis nightmare.

PS: This article was co-written with Google Gemini