Welcome to the Machine

What if the internet’s most powerful promise—connection—has been quietly training us to feel alone, restless, and never enough? Today I dig into the hidden machinery behind our feeds and unpack how dopamine, variable rewards, and algorithmic profiling nudge our minds, tilt our moods, and gently move our lives toward constant seeking.  The message is subtle and relentless: you’re ALMOST enough. One more product, one more tip, one more hack.  If you’re ready to stop being the product and start steering your attention toward what nourishes you, this one’s for you.

If this resonates, subscribe, share it with a friend who needs it, and leave a review so we can grow a community rooted in awakening and real human connection. What’s one boundary you’ll set with your phone today? Do tell us all, please! 

As always, I wish you the greatest health and vibrant energy...and of course PEACE! xoxo

Chapters

• 0:00 Opening Quote And Big Question
• 2:10 Host’s Mission And Community Vision
• 3:20 Series Return And Tech Glitches
• 4:15 Media Control And Cultural Conditioning
• 6:40 Algorithms, Dopamine, And Profiling
• 11:00 Variable Rewards And Addiction
• 15:20 The Buying Loop And Identity Traps
• 20:05 Anticipation, Nervous System, And Fatigue
• 24:20 Stimulation Versus Meaning
• 26:30 Conscious Engagement And Closing

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:00

If we believe that the world is a cruel and insidious place, said Ian Tovoski, then you will behave like that is the absolute and only truth. So the question then becomes for us today, Free to Just Beers, are we being trained to believe just that, that the world is cruel and insidious? Hmm. It might be worth an investigation today, as I welcome you back to Free to Just Be, the podcast where my personal dance of transformation hopefully becomes an invitation for you to start your own dance. I'm your host, Teresa Marie, an ambassador of Qi, and I'm here to share my daily observations, my personal lessons and awakenings, as together we navigate this powerful energetic shift that's unfolding across Humanityville. Now, this isn't a theory or uh something that I've learned in a book. This is my own personal lived experience. The messy, the beautiful, the ones that expanded my soul, and the ones that have kept me in the fetal position many times. And my intention with this podcast is very simple. I want us all to help each other, to feel what's happening inside us, around us, and through us, and to open our minds to the truth that we are literally not alone in this ascension journey. We are all traveling to the same destination, destination unknown. And as we awaken together, hopefully this podcast and many others like it will become a bridge, one that leads us back into real life connections. Eventually, I hope to do gatherings and have movement nights, community circles, and embodied practices that will bring us out of social media isolation and back into compassionate presence with each other. So, if you all are ready to reconnect with yourself, with humanity, with God, and with our natural world all around us, you're exactly where you're meant to be. There are no koinky dinks after all. It's a synchronicity that maybe you found free to just be for the first time, or maybe you're continuing to listen within the three years that I've been doing it. So before we begin, I invite you to like, subscribe, and share this episode with somebody that might need it so together we can begin to grow a community rooted in awakening and truly real human connection once again. This is free to just be. Let's begin today, shall we? Well, hey, hey, hey, Humanityville. I'm so glad that you are taking some time on this beautiful Tuesday, January 13th in the brand new year of 2026. And we are going to touch base again about this series that I've been doing. Took a little break from it on Sunday, um, and I'm back at Scrolling the Blue Is Killing the Real You series. And today we are going to delve a little deeper. In fact, um this is probably one of the rarest occasions that I'm actually going to use some notes from research that I've been doing. And here we are once again uh experiencing glitches uh within my laptop today as I try to record. But you know, we're just gonna keep going forward and we're gonna overcome every one of those obstacles because obviously this is a message that needs to go out because all of us are in the process of the most insidious program of all. And of course, that would be um the internet and social media scrolling the blue, killing the real you. That's what we're talking about. And I open with a quote by Ian Tavaski, and again, I reiterate, he said, if you believe that the world is cruel and an insidious place, you will behave like that. Is the absolute and only truth. Now, it is literally happening to us. This is this is how they have been slowly turning up the heat of that proverbial pot with the frog in it, right? Now, Abraham Joshua Herschel said it very well as well, in a different way. His quote is indifference to evil is more insidious than evil itself. And of course, insidious meaning hidden, we don't really get it, it's happening, and we're not really realizing it, right? So indifference to evil is more insidious than the evil itself. It is a silent justification affording evil acceptability in society. Now, I ask you, Humanityville, you just ask yourself, has social media, has the internet, has, you know, the marketplace of the world, have we not been trained to believe now that that is where everybody has to go? That's that's where we have to be. If if you're not on the internet, of all things, on the world wide web, then you are not in business. Is that not how it's opposed to us now? Right? And then we take a throwback, a blast from the past from years ago, by Jim Morrison from The Doors. And what was Jim Morrison quoted as saying? Whoever controls the media controls the mind. And the profundity about Jim Morrison saying that quote is the fact that his very dad sold him out to MKUltra. And right there is an invitation for you, my dear brothers and sisters out there in Humanityville, where we're all we're all trying to come back to Humanityville, aren't we? We are all trying to come back to a real reality when we are being trained to live in one that's online. And we're so detached from each other. That's that's why connection has become a big deal, because we're so disconnected from it. And that's why I've coined that phrase Humanityville, because you and I, as human beings, have been trained and continue to be trained to not be in Humanityville. We want to be in the blue scroll, we want the blue glow. We we want to be where all the action is. And how many of you have heard? I ask you the question: have you not heard that? You're not on the internet? Um, what what is you know, what is your um online account? What is your handle on your Facebook page? Are you on Instagram? Uh, surely you do TikTok. What? You you you don't have a Facebook account? It's almost as if something is wrong with you if you are not fully engaged and hooked in to the internet of all things, right? And yet Jim told us the truth. Because you see, the evil, the darkness, literally tells on itself. And if you're not sure about MKUltra and Jim Morrison's dad, or the Beatles, or anything about music back in the day, prior to uh when the internet came in to be, then that is an invitation for you to resurrect. I always say this, this is one of my phrases that I've coined and used frequently. It's time for you then to in uh to resurrect inquisition, to search it out for yourself, because you're in charge of finding the truth, nobody else. Because if you're gonna listen to what Google says over what God says, then you're gonna continue to allow the media to control your mind. Because remember, we've talked about the progression, right? You know, TV used to turn off at midnight, and then TV was on 24-7, and we we went through that in prior episodes. So today we're gonna go a little bit deeper and investigate how is it that the media is controlling our minds? Well, let me pull out my notes. Give me a second. So last week, um, on Friday's episode, we were talking about dopamine, its benefits, and its pitfalls, right? So we're gonna go a little further into understanding what exactly that is and how it is being used to literally control our minds via media, all media. All right. So let's just refresh our brains here. You know, it's Tuesday, it's been a couple, three days since we talked about it last. So I'm reminding us that dopamine is released when the brain anticipates a reward, like you know, Pavlog's Dogs, for example. Not just when we get the reward, but literally when we might get the reward. Social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and all the others are literally built specifically around the mechanism of dopamine. So let's look at how this loop works. So we talked a little bit about algorithms as well on Friday. So social media doesn't just show content randomly. If you think that you're randomly, I mean, surely we've had conversations before. You know, I was talking about uh getting a new watch, and suddenly you have all these ads about watches. And, you know, people have asked, well, you know, are people listening to us? Yes, they are listening to us. Yes, because we think that we are on the marketplace of the world, and we think that we're the ones shopping, and we don't recognize, or at least we're starting to recognize, one would hope, that we're not the shoppers. We are the ones, we we're the merchandise, and we are being milked not only of our money, not only of our time and our um attention, but our very creativity and essence is what the darkness is shopping for on social media and all all platforms, right? Okay, so let's talk about how this loop works a little bit, right? It doesn't show us content randomly. No, it uses the algorithms that study what? It studies what we pause on when we're online, what we like. You know, that like button is not just for us to feel good when people like us. No, no, no, no, no. It is training the computers as to what we like. It picks up what we comment on, the things that we search, what we buy or almost buy, what emotionally activates you, especially um our fears, our desires, what what we comment, like um whatever outrages us or um validates our opinion, man, they suck that in and they say, oh, this outrages this person. So let's feed it more of that because they are setting us up to literally be against one another, right? So from all the data that they collect, each platform learns what keeps all of us engaged the longest. They are literally making a um character, you know, it it's literally profiling us, right? And then it feeds us more of what our profile says it wants. So every time humanity that we scroll, our brain begins to anticipate something interesting, something that validates our opinions, something new that, oh, well, you know, the like the squirrel, you know, we oh, that looks good, let's look at that. Or it'll be something that emotionally stimulates us. And these whatever that anticipation triggers, um that no, let me let me rephrase that. Everything that we see when we scroll causes that anticipation to trigger a dopamine spike. Thus, we are addicted to these dopamine spikes. So let's explain a little bit why that becomes addictive. Now I am reading from my notes because I am not an expert here. Just like if you want a podcast that talks more about the scientific aspects of the energetic uh level of what we're going through, uh, if you want to talk more about the Schumann resonance, for example, or um different scientific aspects of uh the brain spikes, then uh your everyday life with Michael de Grassio. No, Michael uh I can't remember his last name. But there is a podcast for every one of you. Uh the scientific aspect, the emotional aspect, the um the woo-hoo, the spiritual realms, the channeling realms. Whatever it is you're interested in, you're gonna find a podcast of people talking about this awakening journey, this ascension journey, this dance of life that we're on, right? So I I've never professed to be a scientist, so I am literally using my notes today, right? This is like the first time I'm actually referring to notes, other than my own journal. So, why these algorithms and these dopamine uh spikes become addictive? Because the key factor isn't actually pleasure, it's uncertainty. Because sometimes the content hits and sometimes it doesn't. But occasionally the content that they're feeding us really lands. So that's what's called variable rewards, the same mechanism that they use in slot machine. You you you you think this isn't by design. Well, it is, because our brain learns that maybe the very next time we scroll, we'll get the satisfaction that we want, the dopamine hit that we want, right? So you keep scrolling. And over time, this is creating a constant low-grade dopamine spike. Not the natural kind like we get when we're outside, no. And it and it reduces our baseline satisfaction. In other words, we need more, we need more. And then it also creates a restlessness when our dopamine isn't simulated. It creates a difficult a difficulty in our focus, it creates emotional numbness, and it creates a craving for novelty, you know, new. I want something new, I want something new instead of the depth of true learning, right? Um, it's why our kids cannot focus because they're scrolling, they're scrolling, they're scrolling. So it's it's an incredible and very insidious, in other words, it's underneath the surface. We're not really identifying it. It's it's like that slow water literally boiling the frog. Now, here's another extremely important part of these loops, and that's the buying loop, talking about how we are literally their commodity. Algorithms detect our desires or our insecurities, and they connect dopamine directly to our consumption. All the things that we do, every outward external reach that help keep us, like I, you know, I've been very clear and vulnerable, uh, and I hate it sometimes. Some, you know, I've told you before that this podcast keeps me authentic because I can't not be vulnerable and true and tell you exactly what I'm going through. And sometimes that really sucks, right? Because I have to admit that I have been sucked in or I've been in the loop-de-loop, but it is also a way for me to maintain my own authenticity because you know I may not be sharing it with people I love or and I take that back because I love all of humanity. And and yet it's kind of like a safety net for me. Maybe it's something I'm not ready yet to share with my husband or my children or my my friends, but I can come on this podcast, sit behind the microphone, and put it out there because there's somebody I know out in Humanityville that's going to relate and be helped by it, because we all want to be vulnerable, but we're scared. We're scared to be vulnerable. We we go back to all the things that help us not be vulnerable, thus, this buying loop. And they are using it to the max. Why? Because they show us products that promise relief. And I shared, you know, just. December, I had a lot of emotional upheaval, and I reached for everything. Spending was my way to make myself feel better. And boy, they knew exactly. You know, my husband and I are talking about being uncomfortable with our pillows. Boom! All the pillow ads came up. Heard me kind of griping to myself about my skin, and all the quasi-skin mass came up, right? And what these algorithms do, not only do they show products that promise us relief, specific to us, it identifies it gives us identities that we can buy into. In other words, if you think, well, like the news, we see the news, every news station tells us the same thing. Why? Because they want us to believe what they're feeding us. That's the propaganda part of it. But every one of us, they have our number. So your number might not be quasi-face mask. Maybe it's maybe you're like my husband. You're into Jeep parts and you're searching for certain bumpers. So that's what your feed is going to get, right? It offers us fixes for discomfort, very um pointed to who we are. And it gives us upgrades for our perceived lack, right? I really want that bumper from my Jeep that, you know, I see everybody else, you know, because we we are so into the herd mentality, right? And the messages become very subtle but very constant. And the the bottom line message that they're constantly feeding us is you're almost enough. Just one more little thing. Just buy this one more thing, and then you'll be enough. Because the person on Facebook that you're following and comparing yourself with, well, they use this product, and maybe if you use this product, then you'll be as good as them. Do you see how it all works? So each ad that we get triggers what? Anticipation. Anticipation is making me wait. Just like I did to myself. I was waiting for the pillows to arrive in the mail so that I could see if what they told me was true. Waiting in the mail for the Omni Photo stick so I can see if I don't have to pay for more storage, which by the way, I still haven't gone back to because it was such a pain in the ass to use. I don't want to go back and try it because oh, it was touted as being so easy, you just plug it in and it does all the work for you. BS, BS, BS. Just just saying, right? Now let's talk about what each ad, all right. So each ad triggers anticipation, hope that the product is going to work, and there it is again. It gives us each a small dopamine release. We don't want dopamine to work normally. They don't want us to go out in nature and feel the natural dopamine release. No, they want it to be structured and and to get us to buy, buy, buy. That is mainly what they're doing, right? Even if you don't buy, your nervous system stays where? In a constant seeking state. Dude, I'm I'm recognizing that in my seeking state of trying to be free from the matrix. If I constantly seek something new to get me out of the matrix, well, I'm constantly in that, you know, oh, I found this podcast and that's gonna help me. And that is part of the natural learning process. But at some point, you recognize, no, there's nothing outside of me. And I'm still in that loop, okay, and I'm gonna share a little bit about that in that next episode. Let's continue. Why is what they're doing online, getting us to buy and all of that, why this so affects our nervous system? If we live in constant anticipation, it keeps our body what? Out of complete rest, and we wonder why we can't sleep well. It keeps us out of presence. We're either trapped in the past or we're future tripping, we're looking forward to whatever is coming, right? And it keeps us out of embodiment in that present moment. So our nervous systems never get to settle, and we wonder why we always feel like we're fried. And that it's the absolute opposite of what we're really seeking. We truly want contentment, satisfaction, and grounded motivation, right? And instead, we experience agitation, comparison, chronic wanting, and absolute emotional, intellectual, spiritual fatigue. And this isn't a moral failure on our part. What we are literally experiencing is biological conditioning. It is literally trying to rewire our normal patterns that God created within us to hijacking it and having everything online be what we're after and what is affecting us all of it. And this comes at a really deep cost. That that's the part that's so insidious. We don't realize that over time the deeper cost is that all of us out there in humanity, Bill, are beginning to confuse stimulation with aliveness, consumption with fulfillment, and scrolling with connection. But dopamine without meaning eventually leaves us even emptier than ever before. And that's why people are saying all over the planet now, I don't know why I'm unhappy. I have everything, I have nothing to be unhappy with, right? And that's why I continue to talk about this, because the solution isn't quitting technology altogether, but we have to become conscious and we have to enter into conscious engagement. And we will talk about how we can become healthy again on one of our next episodes. But I think we've given ourselves a whole lot to ponder right now. Are we literally being trained? Just like, you know, the Pavlog's dog. We want that feeling of contentment. So we go to our phones over and over and over again. And I'm gonna I'm gonna share about my phone experience as well. But in the meantime, as we close down today's episode of Free to Just Be, as always, I want to close with first off asking you to please like, please subscribe, and let's share it everywhere because these are messages that need to get out. We we need to start taking full responsibility for body, mind, and soul, don't we? So please hit the like button right now. And I want to leave you with my wish, as always, for your greatest health and your most vibrant energy to be with you today and every day. And of course, I wish you so much peace.