Will Loughridge; Play

Mutterings in a stairwell

In the article "Student Flung Brick at Canaday Window on Saturday, Drawing HUPD Response", The Harvard Crimson reports on a first-year student experiencing what presents as a psychotic episode. The story begins with mumblings about AI and demons, and ends with a brick thrown through an interior window. There's more to say.

First, I'd like mention that I feel vaguely ill-at ease engaging in a somewhat glib discussion regarding a person who is obviously in the midst of a serious mental health crisis. I have no intention of discussing the student themselves; I hope for their well being, and that they are able to recieve help. I would much rather look at the specific words involved in this incident.

"[T]he student was pacing in the Canaday stairwell while talking about artificial intelligence and demons... he appeared disoriented, but not aggressive, she said."

The object of the person's concern is completely reasonable. AI, as it is impropely called, is the closest thing to the demonic which we have ever been able to produce of our own accord. The Torah is clear in its injuction against ha’obot and hayyiddi‘oniim. We are as close as we have ever been. The ad copy reads as follows: "Utilize our new AI-powered tools to optimize and synergize your divination practices in order to streamline and integrate your spritist practices by modernizing and supersizing your divination/spiritist practices for the small price of the future of humanity!"

"She said the word “labubu” and... Immediately after hearing the word, the student began to shout and ran toward [her]."

Aside from the obvious fact that hearing the word "Labubu" directed at oneself is enough to hasten a psychological break in most reasonable and stable individuals, I think that there is some significance to this "trigger word," as it were.

I should clarify that I have no interest in analysis of Labubu as the demon Pazuzu. Word association, especially association as basic as swapped consonants, is deeply uninteresting. If we were engaging in some sort of investigative numerology in the Rosicrucian tradition or perhaps a Qabalah-based semantic methodology (not to be confused with Kabbalah), I would be much more intrigued. But alas, we are not. Indeed, this above image is merely a formation of pixels based on the guesswork of silicon chips which have harvested their value from the work of people. Could it get more disappointing?

Of course it could! And it probably will. Psychosis with some connection to popular culture is not rare. Given the popularity and inescapability of the increasingly rapid flow of micro-trends washing over anyone who is not a millenial, it follows that at least one person was bound to have a psychotic episode related, in whatever sense, to Labubu. As tantalizing as it would be to attempt to extract the exact relationship between this specific person's reaction to hearing "Labubu," I am not a psychoanalist, and have no desire to wade into the realm of the subconscious, or the realm of psychosis, of another human being. There is too much space between us for that to be anything more than a fantasy.

However, I would care to state the obvious: as the generation who has never consciously existed without an algorithmic internet heads towards their early, middle, and even late twenties, there is bound to be an uptick in this flavor of mental health crisis. Many mental disorders which can manifest psychosis, schizophrenia chief among them, are most likely to emerge in the third decade of life. Just as we have seen an extremely well-documented increase in psychotic episodes brought about by excessive usage of word-guessing computer models (often senselessly referred to as "generative AI"), we are also seeing the internet permeate psychosis/subject by a different means. The psychosis-inducing abilities of the internet are not restrained to a by-product of the tools which we have made to speak back to us. The internet, and all that is in it, is now in us. And through psychosis, it comes out. How could you not be angry? Is there anyone in this circumstance who could withstand the intensity of all that is on-line brought to bear on a fragile mind by the evocation of a single word?

I would advise that you refrain from approaching anyone while saying the word "Labubu." Today, this could've been anyone. It could've been me. It will be someone else, soon. May G+d shield our hearts from that which our minds cannot escape. Too little, too late.