The Algorithm Knows You’re Dead

Lila Parker sat at her desk, bathed in the cold blue glow of her laptop. Her eyes, ringed with exhaustion, scanned the dismal stats of her latest video. Fifty views. Four likes. Zero comments. The harsh reality of being a small-time content creator weighed heavily on her chest. She’d given herself six months to make it or move on. The deadline was two days away.

Scrolling through an endless stream of successful influencers flaunting their perfect lives, she felt a bitter pang of envy. Her dream was slipping through her fingers. Then, a pop-up appeared on her screen: “Discover the platform where your audience never sleeps. Join Eterna.”

The design was sleek but minimalistic, the tagline bold and inviting: “Your audience awaits, forever.” Curiosity, mixed with desperation, nudged her to click the link. The site’s interface loaded instantly. It asked for basic details, then requested something unusual: “Grant access to your digital footprint for optimized performance.”

Lila hesitated but ultimately clicked “Accept.” She had nothing left to lose.

Two hours later, her first video went live on Eterna. It was a simple ghost story, narrated with her usual mix of charm and dread. By the time she woke up the next morning, her phone was buzzing nonstop. She rubbed her eyes and stared at the screen. 100,000 views. 10,000 likes. The numbers kept climbing.

“No way,” she whispered, her heart pounding. Eterna’s algorithm had worked miracles overnight. Notifications flooded in: comments praising her storytelling, followers begging for more, brands inquiring about partnerships. She was stunned.

The next few weeks felt like a dream. Lila’s videos trended daily, and her subscriber count exploded. Eternal’s algorithm even suggested eerie but compelling topics for her videos. One day, it recommended: “The haunting of a forgotten childhood memory.” Intrigued, Lila filmed a story about a strange figure she’d seen outside her bedroom window as a child. The video went viral, amassing over a million views in less than 24 hours.

But something felt off.

It started with the comments. Most were normal, but a few felt… wrong. One user, @SilentWatcher, wrote: “The window scene was my favorite. You looked so scared.”

Lila frowned. How could they know she’d been genuinely scared? She hadn’t mentioned her feelings in the video. Another comment, from @WhisperingAshes, read: “That figure still watches you. It’s closer now.”

A chill ran down her spine. She dismissed the comments as trolls, but they left her uneasy.

Then came the videos she didn’t remember uploading. They appeared on her profile, fully edited and in her voice. The topics were deeply personal: her first heartbreak, the loss of her dog, a secret fear of drowning. The algorithm seemed to know things she’d never shared online.

Her followers loved the content. But Lila felt exposed, as if the platform had ripped open her soul and put it on display.

“This is too weird,” she muttered, scrolling through the comments of a video she hadn’t made. One stood out: “You’re almost ready to join us.”

Determined to get answers, Lila contacted Eterna’s support team. Days passed with no response. Frustrated, she tried to delete her account but found the option grayed out. Her emails bounced back. Her unease grew into paranoia.

That night, her phone buzzed with a notification: “New comment from @SilentWatcher: Check the mirror.”

Her blood ran cold. Slowly, she turned to the mirror on the wall. At first, she saw only her reflection, pale and trembling. But then it blinked. She hadn’t.

Lila screamed and threw a blanket over the mirror. Her phone buzzed again: “We see you.”

The next day, Lila’s desperation led her to dig deeper into Eterna. She scoured forums and obscure websites, piecing together a chilling truth. Eterna wasn’t just a platform. It was a digital graveyard. The audience wasn’t made up of living users but echoes of the dead, their digital footprints repurposed to engage with the living.

The algorithm didn’t just learn about its users; it absorbed them. It fed on their secrets, fears, and memories, turning them into permanent content creators for its endless, undead audience. The tagline, “Your audience awaits, forever,” wasn’t a promise—it was a warning.

Lila’s phone buzzed again. A notification from Eterna: “You’ve gone viral in the afterlife.”

Terrified, Lila decided to shut everything down. She powered off her devices, unplugged her router, and smashed her phone for good measure. For a brief moment, the silence was comforting. But then she noticed the faint hum coming from her laptop. It was on, though she was sure she’d turned it off.

The screen glowed with a single line of text: “You can’t leave.”

The laptop’s camera light flickered on. Her reflection appeared on the screen, but it wasn’t quite right. The other Lila smirked, her eyes dark and hollow. “They’re waiting for you,” it said, its voice distorted but unmistakably hers.

Lila slammed the laptop shut and ran to her bedroom, locking the door. Her mind raced. Could she escape? Was escape even possible?

In the days that followed, Lila’s behavior grew erratic. She refused to touch any electronic devices, even the TV. But strange things continued to happen. Her reflection moved independently in the bathroom mirror. Faint whispers echoed through the house at night. And every morning, a new video appeared on her Eterna profile.

In the final video, Lila’s pale face filled the frame. Her eyes were wide with fear, her voice shaking. “If you’re watching this, don’t join Eterna. Don’t let the algorithm in. It—”

The video cut off abruptly. Her account was silent after that.

Weeks later, Lila’s landlord entered her apartment to investigate complaints of a strange smell. He found her sitting at her desk, her lifeless eyes fixed on the laptop screen. The smell wasn’t decay—it was burnt circuitry. Her laptop was fried, but her face remained eerily illuminated, as if lit from within.

Lila’s Eterna profile remains active to this day. New videos continue to upload, each one more haunting than the last. Her audience grows, drawn to her chilling stories and the unsettling authenticity of her fear.

In the comments, one username appears again and again: @SilentWatcher. Their latest comment reads: “Welcome home.”