Death of the Discourse
The autopsy of a once skilled art
Case No. 000-BS
Deceased: Discourse
Date of Death: Indeterminate due to slow but thorough decomposition
Cause of Death: Fatal self-referentialism
Scene Report
Discourse was last seen in good health sometime in the mid-2000s, during the age of long, engaged comment threads and earnest disagreements that might occasionally result in the changing of minds. Over the years, Discourse became thinner and paler, losing colour and muscle mass. What began as a practice of curiosity that strengthened slowly turned into a performance of certainty that no longer challenged.
By the time research and diagnosis caught up, Discourse had already withdrawn and lost most of its life-force.
External Examination
General condition: Brittle; evidence of repeated exposure to spectacle.
Several organs appear atrophied. Context has disappeared entirely. Nuance is fragmented and scattered across incompatible dialects. Empathy shows early signs of mummification. Listening, once efficient, has hardened into reflexive waiting for one’s turn to speak.
A residue of irony coats the remaining tissue, once a protective barrier, now a suffocating film.
Toxicology
Primary Agent: Outrage
Tolerated in microdoses; fatal in sustained quantities.Secondary Agent: Attention
Produced dependency and withdrawal cycles indistinguishable from dopamine addiction.Additional Contaminants:
Academic and therapized jargon, false equivalence, algorithmic reinforcement, and capitalistic empathy for brands and public figures.
Autopsy Findings
Heart: Enlarged, but unreliable. Pressure increased due to spikes in cortisol. Once motivated by persuasion and understanding, now pumping primarily for pride.
Brain: Compressed to fit within scrolling parameters, focus manageable for 30 seconds to 2.5 minutes. Evidence of echo-chamber lesions and scars of circular reasoning.
Stomach: Undernourished by reflection.
Spine: Absent. Likely dissolved in a solution of myopic insularity.
Skin: Hypersensitive. Minor critique provokes inflammation.
Historical Background
The ancestors of Discourse took root and flourished in streets, salons, gas station diners and the printed letters of earlier centuries. It survived revolutions, wars, and the invention of television.
Its decline began when dialogue was reengineered as engagement. Platforms built for exchange became theatres for identity, and argument was positioned as content. What had once been a practice in thinking turned into a competition for visibility.
By the early 2020s, Discourse was imitated by bots and brands, programmed to mimic sincerity.
In the end, the imitation proved good enough.
Forensic Timeline
2010: Outrage discovered as a renewable resource.
2014: Insincerity becomes the new common tongue.
2016: The difference between disagreement and character assassination collapses.
2020: Isolation amplifies delusion and conspiracy.
2023: Corporations begin “having conversations.” Death becomes inevitable.
Preliminary Conclusion
Cause of Death: Blunt-force trauma from moral superiority
Contributing Factors:
Algorithmic manipulation of attention
Incentives for polarization
The exhaustion of listening
Manner of Death: Cultural neglect, social isolation, individualism, assisted by design.
Personal Effects
Recovered:
A half-written comment that may have led somewhere
A list of questions never asked aloud
Fragments of a shared reality
Tagged and stored for future study.
Final Remarks
There is no single culprit. Discourse died the way most things do, slowly, and with our cooperation.
Every simplification made in the name of clarity, every refusal to sit with uncertainty, and every time we treated disagreement as an attack on our humanity had implications.
Still, faint activity has been detected in private message threads, forgotten forums, and the bustling tables of people willing to ponder in public. There, language continues its quiet work of curiosity.