Ore Oduba

And by this point I was fully addicted to gaming.

There was broadband in the room, two doors along the hallway and pornography.

So by mid teens, I'd be up until the early hours, two o'clock, three o'clock in the morning playing games and downloading explicit adult material on the internet.

That was a nightly activity.

I didn't know that I was in the thick of something that had already gripped me.

That's something that I had been reversing to as a kind of friend.

Some kind of like where I went for trauma, where I went to feel, where I went if...

You know, there'd been bad news, good news.

If I was angry, if I was feeling lonely, if I was feeling depressed, I didn't know that this was my kind of, my go-to.

And you know, it's also really quite sinister because I think there is a reciprocity.

There's something reciprocal about addiction where you, whether you reach for the bottle or you reach for the drug, it's always kind of the friend that's kind of there.

This material has become so reciprocal, whether it's algorithms, whether it is kind of AI today, where you can literally create whatever it is that you want without the friction of a real person offering their own kind of retort, their own values, their own humanity.

And that holds you.

There's a kind of, there's a retention.

There's a kind of like,

know i think so much of the model of today is about audience retention but i think this is based on addiction it's like we need to keep you here yeah and i think when you're so shamed you're so isolated and you know i can't talk to this even with my closest friends let alone siblings or family this is the only place i can go when they understand that you are alone

It preys on that shame and loneliness.

It's almost like a discourse.

We know how shameful and we know how disgusting you are.

This is where you need to be.