Topic Battle

The verdict arrives with the grim inevitability of an algorithm optimising for engagement. Whilst Darth Vader commanded fear through extraordinary individual power, social media has achieved something more profound: the normalisation of constant surveillance, the monetisation of human attention, and the wholesale rewiring of social behaviour across species-wide scales. Vader required a Death Star; social media requires only a smartphone and approximately three seconds of boredom. The Sith Lord's influence ended with his physical demise; social media's influence compounds with each passing quarter, each new feature, each additional minute of average daily usage. By a margin of fifty-five to forty-five, social media claims victory.