Re:We Are Living in Pinocchio’s World

I would never have thought that Pinocchio, a childhood fairy tale, could resonate so strongly in today's world of algorithms, polarisation, and post-truth.
Malik's post is incredible. The way he spotted the similarities between the 19th-century story written by Carl Collodi - the author of Pinocchio - and a modern world dominated by algorithms, convenience, entertainment, polarisation, and showmanship, meant that with every paragraph of his story, my eyes opened wider and wider.

Om Malik writes:

The Land of Toys is the sequence that haunts me most, especially now. Children abandon school and responsibility for a place of permanent amusement. They play. And then, gradually, they begin to change. They grow ears. They grow tails. They become donkeys, beasts of labor and exploitation, stripped of language, used until they break.

This is a parable of who we have become, a BNPL-fueled spectacle in itself.

Collodi was writing during rapid industrialization and the early emergence of mass entertainment. He understood, earlier than most, that distraction offered as pleasure can be a leash. The children who choose the Land of Toys over school are not liberated. They are owned more completely than any schoolroom could manage.

The algorithmic feed is the Land of Toys. It is built to keep you there past the point of nourishment, past the point where you are even enjoying it. Outrage travels faster than understanding. Spectacle beats judgment. The algorithm doesn’t care whether something is true. It cares whether it moves. And it keeps you scrolling, reacting, and returning in ways that benefit the platform, not you.

The political system has learned the same lesson. Governance is slow and grinding and unsatisfying. Performance is fast and shareable. We have built media and political economies that reward entertainers over administrators, and the clean story over the complicated truth.

Collodi refuses to assign blame only upward. That is what keeps the novel from collapsing into moralism. Pinocchio is deceived because he wants to be deceived. He chooses shortcuts over work, belonging over truth, spectacle over judgment, every time, until the costs become too steep to ignore. The Fox and the Cat succeed because he hands them what they need. His credulity is not innocent. It is participation.

I don't know if I'll read anything wiser or more thought-provoking anytime soon. You absolutely must read Maja's entire post. It's so relevant right now.
I've also added a link to it in Junited 2026.