A new pandemic, 'digital psychosis.'

The Unfiltered Reel

By: Wyatt Edward Stephens
Unfiltered Feeds
June 11th, 2022

We have a new modern battle in that of a pandemic called, ‘digital psychosis.’ 

The word ‘psychosis’ provides the assumption of evil mania. And though rightfully so, digital psychosis does not have to be.

But one thing is for sure: digital psychosis is a digital addiction that includes a form of derealization.

Broken down, an informal definition of digital psychosis includes manic pathways of extreme measures and actions to gain social media attention with the hopes of becoming an influencer; viral recognition. 

Anna Delvey, the con artist that claimed she was an heiress to that of German wealth, is the perfect example of someone that exhibits traits of digital psychosis. 

Delvey, whose real name is Anna Sorokin, went on a spree of luxurious spending, traveling, and staying in boutique hotels while curating relationships with Manhattan’s fashion and business elites.

She never worked or made money during her luxurious sprees. Yet Delvey was able to spend an enormous amount of cash. 

Delvey successfully convinced others of her false reality for four years, the portrayal and deceit that she was indeed a German heiress.

Delvey provided fraudulent documentation to secure loans, credit cards, and credit lines. She also convinced hotels, restaurants, and then new friends to pay her outstanding hotel bills, restaurant bills, or any costs she accrued ‘temporarily,’ as Delvey claimed to be ‘good’ for paying back money that she owed to others.

And Anna Delvey made it known that she was good.

By receiving significant loans, Delvey started to build her dream foundation, the ‘Anna Delvey Foundation.’

The vision for the ‘Anna Delvey Foundation’ would be to create a ‘private members club with dynamic visual arts.’ For Delvey, the foundation would only succeed if she had the $56 million to lease Gramercy’s Church Missions House.

‘The Anna Delvey Foundation’ failed to receive full funding.

But to others that knew her, and to her social media followers, Delvey portrayed the image that she had both luxury and connections to afford Church Missions House.

Her luxury, sprees, and the idea of creating new connections with Manhattan’s elites came to an end in October of 2017 when Delvey was grounded with reality: arrested and charged on numerous counts of felony grand larceny.

The ‘German Heiress’ continued to live in a world of derealization, even long after her arrest.

Why?

Maybe Delvey convinced herself that she was a German heiress?

That this was indeed her reality?

That she came to New York to truly create the ‘Anna Delvey Foundation?’

Whatever the case, Delvey got the attention, just maybe not the way that she wanted. 

The whole world, myself included, watched Delvey’s story play out on the popular Netflix series, ‘Inventing Anna.’

Ironically enough, Delvey received clean money: an actual check from Netflix in the amount of $330,000 to grant Netflix the right to share her story.

Today we all have access to stories within the pockets full of media that we carry, the digital media so engaging, that we reach back into them every three minutes.

We are hooked on content that can be funny, shocking, odd, thrilling, extreme, and so forth.

It is a digital obsession that often provides us with the wonders of, ‘how?’ 

The story of Anna Delvey was that thrilling content. Her story was fun, exciting, and giddy to watch.

It made us wonder, ‘how?’ 

But Delvey’s story, where the main character has characteristics of digital psychosis, is few and far between: many with this psychosis often pay for their extremes, but rarely does one get paid.

And therein lies the problem: ill-willed individuals with the derealization of beliefs, a ‘societal promise’ that extreme acts and messaging will provide an instant viral moment.

These extremes could include high jumping from a dangerous bridge, the Tide pod challenge, an obstacle course with blazing fires, or Dennis the Menace types of pranks where the victim is unknowingly violent and having a bad day.

And I get it.

We all have bad days, and we all have a venting social media platform. 

There are few that don’t get it and believe their ‘message’ must spread beyond any digital means and real-world ‘action’ and messaging must take place.

This messaging and derealization was tragically seen in Uvalde, Texas. 

What we know about this ill-willed individual of evil is that he vented online, took pictures and selfies with high-caliber firearms, and had moments of digital psychosis.

The shooter wanted to bring attention to whatever ‘message’ he felt called to bring, and maybe posthumous fame.

In going back to Delvey, she also wanted fame but the two stories are completely different in nature.

Delvey’s moments of fame created moments in which the victims of her digital psychosis lost finances, time, and energy: likely confidence in their public image.

And I don’t want to type out what happened to the victims in Uvalde.

With Uvalde, the shooter likely planned out his fame by sending Direct Messages to a girl on Instagram, a girl that had no remote affiliation with him.

He asked this girl to repost some of his pictures that he tagged her in.

[His first message] ‘Hey’ 

[His second message] ‘You gonna repost my gun pics’

[Her first message] ‘what’

[His third message] ‘?’

[Her second message] ‘WHAT’ 

[Her third message] ‘what your guns gotta do with me’

[His fourth message] ‘Just wanted to tag you’

[Her third message] ‘i’m so confused’

[Her fourth message] ‘but why’

[His fifth message] ‘idk’

[His sixth message] ‘Be grateful I tagged you’

[Her fifth message] ‘no it’s just scary fr’

[His seventh message] ‘How’

[Her sixth message] ‘i barely know you and u tag me in a picture with some guns]

[His eighth message] ‘Uh ig’ 

The conversation breaks until the next portion below.

In the first portion above, the shooter sent eight messages in an Instagram Direct Messaging thread. 

Out of these eight messages, four of them pertain to social media.

Looking further, the ‘Be grateful I tagged you’ is, in my opinion, the shooter’s derealization [digital psychosis] that he could include another victim in his evil and disgusting acts.

But why?

Was this girl someone the shooter fanaticized about?

Did this girl have a lot of followers on Instagram that would get the shooter more ‘fame?’

We do not know. This girl has requested to stay anonymous from my understanding. Her request is something that I will 100% respect.

The shooter’s second portion of Direct Messaging to this anonymous individual reads:

[His ninth message] ‘Hey’

[Her seventh message] ‘hello’

[His tenth message] ‘I’m about to] 

[Her eighth message] ‘what’

[Her ninth message] ‘about to do what’

[Her tenth message] ‘good morning’ 

[His eleventh message] ‘I’ll tell you before 11’ 

[His twelfth message] ‘Good morning’ 

[Her eleventh message] ‘good morning’ 

[Her twelfth message] ‘what’ 

[His thirteenth message] ‘I’ll text you in an hour’ 

[Her thirteenth message] ‘ok ok’ 

[His fourteenth message] ‘but you HAVE TO RESPOND’ 

[His fifteenth message] ‘I got a lil secret’ 

[His sixteenth message] ‘I wanna tell u’

‘ima air out,’ is the last message the shooter would send to her.

Sadly, we know how his messaging played out and ended.

We know the ending of this tragedy so well because of the content that was shared: footage that aired on traditional media outlets, but most importantly for this article’s purpose, the personal content seen throughout the shooter’s own Instagram.

The shooter’s Instagram content included selfies with firearms, the firearms themselves; media likely shared in his moments of digital psychosis.

As I am watching this evil unfold on TV, I start to wonder:

What type of digital psychosis will this produce for the next copycat?

What social media outlet will try their best to timely take down a live stream? 

These burdens should not necessarily put placed on social media companies or technology companies in general. These companies can provide much Good to our society.

It is our government that needs to be held accountable.

Our message and advocacy of reality must ensure that media content, the content of either in-progress shootings, or the aftermath of shootings, is sealed and protected from being shared. 

I am no expert, but I will speak to any politician that starts a conversation, hoping that we all do this right.

A conversation that pertains to a copyright umbrella, one that can bypass Federal Code, Section 230:

No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider
-47 U.S.C. § 230

It would be illegal to share social media content from domestic terrorists, personal content, live streams, manifestos, you name it.

I cannot speak to guns, but I will speak on this issue of digital psychosis.

As an avid internet nerd, the type of nerd that used WebTV to get online in the 90s, I have seen too much of a repeating pattern: the enjoyment, shares, and humanistic curiosity of on-scene, and personal terrorist content within social content that is said to bring a message or a ‘warning sign.’ 

Copycats can be triggered and they could be everywhere on our traditional news feeds and our personal social media feeds.

I believe that we can stop feeding copycats, and humanize digital common sense in this new pandemic of digital psychosis.

I am going to start a small conversation around a Section 230 umbrella-copyright policy. Let’s Pray with our Feet, no matter how small we believe those steps might be.