the video came to an end, a wave of shame washed over Nathan, before he could consider the implications of what he was watching another video began to play.
The individual was no longer calm and inviting, a stern voice exclaimed,
“Wake up. They are lying to you!”
“Question what you are told!”
Nathan was overcome by intrigue, there was something striking and confident about this, he scrolled into another; different face. Same tone.
Nathan’s thumb hovered over the screen, he could swipe go back to something light hearted, normal. He didn’t. The comments flooded Nathan’s brain, “This changed everything for me” “Wake up!” “Life is a conspiracy”.
Nathan felt a flicker of discomfort at that last one. Paranoid. Was that what this was?
He almost laughed. It was just videos. Just opinions. The internet was full of intensity.
Another autoplay.
This speaker leaned forward, elbows on a desk.
“They count on you dismissing this,” she said quietly. “That’s how it works.”
Nathan felt a strange resistance rising in him. A small, stubborn impulse not to be someone who dismisses things too quickly.
He didn’t want to be naïve.
He also didn’t want to be foolish.
The tension between those two positions kept him watching.He picked up his phone and unlocked it again. The 32 unread messages glowed back at him. Group chats. A missed call. A reminder from work.
They looked trivial.
Surface-level.
He locked the screen.
The next video began instantly.
A younger creator this time, more animated.“Look at how narratives shift,” he said, pacing slightly. “Look at what changes and what doesn’t.”
Nathan felt his mind trying to assemble something cohesive out of fragments. But there were no fragments. Only suggestion.
He realised, distantly, that none of the videos had offered a clear claim. Nothing testable. Nothing specific enough to evaluate.Only a mood.
A direction.
Another scroll.
The same cadence greeted him.
“Ask yourself why they don’t talk about this.”
His thumb paused.
He opened the search bar for a moment, considering typing something—anything—to fact-check. Instead, he closed it. He wasn’t convinced. But he wasn’t disengaged either.
The room felt smaller. The light outside the window had dimmed without him noticing. Hours, perhaps. Or maybe just one.
A notification buzzed briefly on the top of the screen. A new message added to the thirty-two.
He ignored it.
Onscreen, the speaker’s voice softened.
“This isn’t about fear,” she said. “It’s about awareness.”
Nathan exhaled slowly.
Awareness sounded reasonable. Responsible, even.
The video ended.
For a second, there was silence.
Then another began automatically.
Nathan did not move his thumb this time.
He simply watched.
This story was submitted as part of the King’s Study Phase of the Gen Z Role Models Project. Added April 2026.
“the video came to an end, a wave of shame washed over Nathan” (S187) © 2026 by The Gen Z Role Models Project is licensed under CC BY 4.0
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