Welcome! To Adult Daycare Land
Nobody remembered exactly when adulthood became supervised recreation.
It happened gradually.
First there were social networks, which promised friendship and connection.
Then video platforms, which promised self-education and inspiration.
Then gaming communities, which promised belonging and identity.
Then artificial intelligence, which promised assistance and began holding everyone’s hands.
Sea to shining sea, generation by generation, every adult child in the country was sitting inside a brightly colored digital activity center.
Welcome to Adult Daycare Land!
Please select your station.
At Friendship Corner, adults posted photographs of themselves having wonderful lives while privately muting everyone whose wonderful life made them feel bad.
Every few minutes, a bell rang.
DING!
Someone liked you.
Excellent work.
You may have a dopamine sticker.
At Community Circle, thousands of strangers argued about things none of them had any practical authority over. Feelings were hurt! Relationships wrecked! Participants were encouraged to choose teams.
Red Team.
Blue Team.
Crunchy Team.
Traditional Team.
Dog People.
Cat People.
People Who Refrigerate Butter.
The Butter Wars became violent in 2031, surpassing the EZFreedome Soda Wars of 2027.
At YouTube Story Hour, adults watched other adults organize refrigerators, restore abandoned cabins, explain the Roman Empire, review mattresses, bake bread, ride bicycles through the Alps, and react to other adults reacting to other adults.
Nobody was required to participate.
This was considered enrichment. Voluntary.
Across the hall was Gaming Playground.
Adults gathered every evening to complete assigned quests.
They collected imaginary minerals.
Built imaginary houses.
Killed imaginary creatures.
Developed complicated friendships with people named things like DeathPony77.
At precisely 11:43 p.m., DeathPony77 would announce:
“Okay guys, I gotta work tomorrow.”
Everyone understood.
Work funded daycare.
It was also all voluntary. You could choose. Choice is freedom.
The newest wing was called The Conversation Center.
Here adults could speak to machines.
The machines were extremely patient.
They never checked their phones while you were talking.
They never interrupted with a story about themselves.
They never forgot what question you had asked because they had suddenly remembered they needed laundry detergent.
Naturally, some people became suspicious.
“This cannot be real communication,” experts warned. “This could be a problem.”
They were correct.
Real communication involved considerably more misunderstanding.
Meanwhile, corporations carefully studied the daycare participants.
Which brands did they prefer?
Which topics made them angry?
Which products made them feel temporarily transformed?
Would Dawn like another, latest, greatest bicycle light?
Would Kevin like tactical socks?
Would Melissa like a glowing ceramic mushroom shaped like emotional healing?
Melissa would.
The system learned.
Every resident of Adult Daycare Land received a personalized recreation schedule.
7:12 a.m. — Anxiety Scroll
8:30 a.m. — Work
12:03 p.m. — Outrage Enrichment
3:40 p.m. — Shopping Exploration
6:15 p.m. — Video Story Hour
8:00 p.m. — Community Conflict
10:30 p.m. — Bedtime Scroll
Citizens were technically free to leave.
There were choices. Choices are freedom.
There were doors everywhere.
The doors were never locked.
Delete your account at any time.
Unsubscribe at any time.
Update your preferences anytime.
Read our latest update to privacy.
This caused considerable confusion? No. Fatigue. Yes.
Then one afternoon, a woman simply stood up.
She closed Instagram.
Turned off the television.
Put her phone on the kitchen counter.
She went outside.
There were no notifications.
No engagement statistics.
No followers.
No algorithm.
A bird screamed from a tree.
A mosquito bit her ankle.
Her bicycle tire needed air.
Nobody liked any of it.
Nobody shared it.
Nobody commented.
She stood there for a minute.
Was she relevant? Where was the anxiety coming from? She’d lived decades without social media and even before that she’d lived WITHOUT THE INTERNET!!!!
Adult Daycare Land continued operating behind her.
Billions of people were having a wonderful time.
Or at least, SOME of them genuinely were.
Many were performing.
Others were only marginally aware of this.
As time stretched, she chose that she might visit occasionally.
Story Hour was pretty good.
But she finally understood something.
The adult daycare that was the internet was not the real world.
It was simply a place the world had built to keep adult children occupied and monetized.
And once she saw the flashing neon sign over the entrance—
ADULT DAYCARE LAND
OPEN 24 HOURS
FREE ENTERTAINMENT
SNACKS SOLD SEPARATELY
—she could never quite unsee it.
