Cult Classic Novel Predicted Our Tragic Situation Over 20 Years Ago

David Foster Wallace’s “Infinite Jest” was published in 1996, when the unyielding stream of video was just a trickle, comparatively. 

Wallace writes of a future North America whose people face a peculiar form of extinction — film. A specific film, known as “the Entertainment,” which is so entertaining that viewers lose interest in anything but viewing it, over and over, until they die. 

A character describes the film’s effects on the United States.

“Now is what has happened when a people choose nothing over themselves to love, each one. A U.S.A. that would die — and let its children die, each one — for the so-called perfect Entertainment, this film. Who would die for this chance to be fed this death of pleasure with spoons, in their warm homes, alone, unmoving … [C]an such a U.S.A. hope to survive for a much longer time? To survive as a nation of peoples? To much less exercise dominion over other nations of other peoples? If these are other peoples who still know what it is to choose? [W]ho will die for something larger? [W]ho will sacrifice the warm home, the loved woman at home, their legs, their life even, for something more than their own wishes of sentiment? [W]ho would choose not to die for pleasure, alone?” 

Our Entertainment is approaching. It may already be here. 

“Everything that is not already television is turning into television,” journalist Derek Thompson, co-author of “Abundance,” wrote Oct. 10.

Thompson offers three examples: 

1. Meta, parent company of Facebook and Instagram.
2. Podcasts.
3. Artificial-Intelligence-powered short-form video apps, like OpenAI’s Sora. 

“Today, only a fraction of time spent on Meta’s services – 7% on Instagram, 17% on Facebook – involves consuming content from online ‘friends’ (‘friend sharing’). A majority of time spent on both apps is watching videos, increasingly short-form videos that are ‘unconnected’ – i.e., not from a friend or followed account – and recommended by AI-powered algorithms Meta developed as a direct competitive response to TikTok’s rise, which stalled Meta’s growth,” Meta wrote in a court document filed Aug. 6. 

Meta claims that their fiercest competitors for your attention are TikTok and YouTube, not messaging apps like Snapchat. 

“Meta is competing for marginal minutes to show ads. And what users want from social apps is best proved by where they choose to spend time. Today that is predominantly ‘unconnected’ short-form video. Meta confirmed this shift in consumer preferences in 2023 by running an experiment that boosted ‘friend-original’ content in Feed by 20%. The result was that users reduced time on Facebook. By contrast, serving more video content, recommended by Meta’s innovative AI-powered algorithms, increased usage.”

Podcasts began, as Thompson writes, as “radio for the Internet.” Today, the most successful podcasts include a video element. Look at Spotify’s top podcasts: The Joe Rogan Experience, The Diary of a CEO, SubwayTakes, The Tucker Carlson Show, This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von. All are available on YouTube in video form.

Physics with Sora 2

…and some anime. pic.twitter.com/AkqVysryzH

— OpenAI (@OpenAI) September 30, 2025

AI social networking is the new kid on the block. But it seems a reasonable experiment. People are willing — eager, even — to dedicate significant portions of their waking lives to unraveling an infinite scroll of videos served to them by AI-powered algorithms. AI-created videos permit algorithms to feed users content with even greater specificity. (RELATED: Tech Company’s Personalized Porn Scheme Will Leave Young Men Worse Off Than Before)

One might object that short-form video is different in kind than TV. It’s the difference between buying a shirt off the rack and having a tailor construct a shirt to your precise measurements, in your favorite color, using your preferred fabric.

Thompson acknowledges this distinction.

“By ‘television,’ I am referring to something bigger than broadcast TV, the cable bundle, or Netflix … When I say ‘everything is turning into television,’ what I mean is that disparate forms of media and entertainment are converging on one thing: the continuous flow of episodic video.”

“Television is not the truth. Television is a damn amusement park, it’s a circus, a carnival, a troupe of acrobats …” Network (1976) pic.twitter.com/MB40HbK9em

— Felipe Henriquez 🎞 (@pipevicioso) July 2, 2017

Writer George W. S. Trow noted television’s opaque power in a 1980 essay: “Television is a mystery. Certain of its properties are known, though. It has a scale … Television does not vary. The trivial is raised up to power. The powerful is lowered toward the trivial. The power behind it resembles the power of no-action, the powerful passive. It is bewitching.”

“No good has come of it,” Trow concludes. 

Television’s bewitching power is to bring very distant things “powerfully close, but just for a minute.” The illusion of intimacy.

“It was sometimes lonely in the grid of one, alone. People reached out toward their home, which was in television. They looked for help.”

Consider the great and tedious discourse over “representation” in film and media. (RELATED: CNN Columnist Whines About Problem So Dumb, It’s Hard To Believe It’s Not Satire)

Charles Yu moaned about “What It’s Like To Never Ever See Yourself on TV” in a 2020 essay for Time Magazine. It’s not enough for Yu to see himself in his friends, his family, the mirror. If you’re going to be a real person, you must be on TV. 

Or social media. A person with a private presence, but no digital one, is not “complete.” They are suspect. It is not enough to have an intimate life — You must capture and publish an image of that intimate life to be a whole human being. 

“Television is dangerous because it operates according to an attention span that is childish but is cold,” Trow writes. “It simulates the warmth of a childish response but is cold. If it were completely successful in simulating the warmth of childish enthusiasm — that is, if it were warm — would that be better? It would be better only in a society that had agreed that childish warmth and spontaneity were equivalent to public virtue; that is, in a society of children.”

Short-form video is “warmer” than television. It gives you just what you want, every time. It never runs dry. Warmth and spontaneity — and “authenticity,” another trait often attributed to children — are indeed the virtues of our time. 

Haunting new essay by Derek Thompson:

“Young people are already degrading their cognitive capabilities by outsourcing their minds to machines…

For most people, the tragedy won’t even feel like a tragedy. We’ll have lost the wisdom to feel nostalgia for what was lost.

Humans… pic.twitter.com/KBnjgIcSjp

— Sue (@suekhim) October 2, 2025

Unlike Wallace’s future, Americans remain mostly capable of turning away from the scroll to satisfy basic bodily needs. It may be that addiction to our Entertainment induces a longer, more severe death. The chipping away of your intellect, will, emotions, focus, personality. Your relationships with other human beings. Your very soul.

If you still believe in that sort of thing.

Follow Natalie Sandoval on X: @NatSandovalDC