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Meatspace Dreams

This might seem inconceivable, but there was a time when everything seemed possible. “The revolution is here!” shouted the headlines in something called “newspapers.” We bought in because the world, our jobs, our lifestyles were dependent on this exciting, dynamic, earth-shattering, mind-blowing new system. The internet! IT WAS GOING TO CHANGE EVERYTHING!

It did.

That was then. The internet was basically a giant tree house in your back yard with a “NO PARENTS ALLOWED” sign scrawled on a piece of wood.

Wait, what am I saying? “No Parents Allowed” was on a sign, but it was no doubt written in Comic Sans.

We slammed the door on our actual lives - the indecipherable mortgage statement, the coworker explaining how he made $10,000 over the weekend betting on football (“WHO DOES THAT?” you asked yourself) and your best friend who desperately begged you to invest in something called “APPLE,” whatever that was.

The internet back then can be summed up this way: the warm glowing arms of dial-up, crackling and buzzing, welcoming you to another world, off on an adventure to something called websites and platforms. Ooooh, so exciting!

If you had dial-up, your waiting times for ANYTHING took on the same frustrations parents feel at Disney World on a much-too-hot summer day with hyperactive kids and a frustrated spouse. If you were fancy, you had “broadband,” so it only took 15 minutes to download and watch the 30-second video of a dancing hamster.

In those days - the early 2000s - the internet was our panic room. And you could be anyone. ANYONE. A ninja. A pirate. A person who knew how to talk to women without immediately sweating through both shirts.

You could argue with strangers about whether Star Wars Episode I was a crime against humanity (it was), watch grainy videos of cats falling off things, and then vanish forever by typing “brb” and never returning.

The web was the one place where you controlled the narrative, mostly because nobody could figure out how to attach a file larger than 1.2 megabytes.

But here it is 2026, and the plot has twisted so violently it needs a neck brace. The internet is no longer the escape hatch. It is the opposite! It’s a mutant from which we must escape, a horror-movie-like monster that infiltrated our lives, seducing us until we realized what was happening.

And now? We have to get away!

We sprint out the front door grasping for reality as if its the last lifeboat on the Titanic. We are desperate for anything that hasn’t been optimized, monetized, and digitized.

Skepticism has turned to disrespect for the virtual video narrated by a synthetic female voice that sounds like it’s trying to sell you essential oils and existential dread at the same time.

Artificial intelligence did NOT sneak up on us. It kicked in the door wearing a cape made of our own search history.

It shouted “I’M HERE TO HELP,” and proceeded to help so hard we’re all developing stress hives. ChatGPT (and its ever-growing family of slightly passive-aggressive siblings—Grok, Claude, Perplexity, Gemini, that one named Steve that nobody asked for) has turned every device into a needy genius intern who thinks every half-formed thought deserves a 1,200-word manifesto with bullet points and a suggested Spotify playlist.

We spend our days issuing prompts like deranged wizards.

“Write me a love letter that makes me sound like Hemingway but also implies my wife should probably get her oil changed.”

Or “generate a photorealistic image of my boss as a disappointed Victorian child.”

Maybe “explain blockchain to me like I’m a golden retriever who just ate half a weed gummy.”

Let’s be honest - the machines are so good now that half the time we don’t even know if we’re talking to a person or a language model that’s been fine-tuned on the collected works of Reddit, TikTok comments, and that one “follower” who won’t stop posting about crypto.

Here’s the terrifying part: it’s gonna get way better.

Or worse.

It all depends on whether you’re a human or a neural network.

By 2028, give or take a few apocalyptic Tuesdays, your personal AI will be so good at being you that you’ll become the understudy in your own life.

It’ll write wittier emails, have more interesting conversations with your friends, and probably remember your wedding anniversary with a custom-generated poem and a same-day drone delivery of ethically sourced chocolate.

You’ll walk back in that same door your sprinted out of at the beginning of this newsletter to find your digital twin already cuddling on the couch, murmuring, “Chill out… your resting heart rate is trending downward, babe,” while still trying to remember whether Tuesday is trash day or recycling day (it’s both, and you missed them).

So people are going to flee into meatspace (meatspace = the OPPOSITE of cyberspace) like it’s a witness-protection program.

Thanks for reading!

Taylor

P.S. Please give a listen to the podcast I am pleased to be part of: STORIES UNLIMITED. Download it on APPLE and SPOTIFY.

And/or, please consider downloading the Dry Bar Comedy+ App on Android or Apple to watch my two Dry Bar Comedy Specials: Hysterical Perspective and Puppet Regime.

Podcasts Spotify Cameo Irreversible (my book)