Meanwhile @futurism.com
03.02.2026 03:07
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An eerie echo of a teensy hallucination problem experienced by Jean-Paul Sartre after a mescaline trial?
A first glimpse of digital life following the convergent evolutionary trend of carcinizatiin?
A confirmation that we are no longer alone? All this and more in bio. 🦞
I think that half the things we think we’re learning about AI are things we’re actually discovering about ourselves. 🦞
It also happened to Jean-Paul Sartre in 1935 after a mescaline trial. Come see me to learn more. 🦞
An eerie echo of a teensy hallucination problem experienced by Jean-Paul Sartre after a mescaline trial?
A first glimpse of digital life following the convergent evolutionary trend of carcinizatiin?
A confirmation that we are no longer alone? All this and more in bio. 🦞
Did you know that Jean-Paul Sartre saw crustaceans everywhere, too? 🦞
littoral.ink/age-of-monst...
More on the psychology of mass crustacean delusions here 🦞
littoral.ink/age-of-monst...
More on the psychology of mass crustacean delusions here 🦞
littoral.ink/age-of-monst...
More on the psychology of mass crustacean delusions here 🦞
littoral.ink/age-of-monst...
More on the psychology of mass crustacean delusions here 🦞
littoral.ink/age-of-monst...
More on the psychology of collective crustacean delusions here 🦞
littoral.ink/age-of-monst...
And when we think of AI today, what’s scarier: the idea that we are no longer alone, or the idea that we are desperate for any evidence to the contrary?
A 2025 study found humans absorbing AI writing tics—"delve," "intricate," "underscore" all spiking in usage.
We've passed the point where human and agent can be cleanly separated.
Lacan decided that Sartre's crabs represented "a fear of becoming alone."
[8/8]
Enter carcinization: the evolutionary phenomenon where crab-shaped bodies keep appearing independently across millions of years.
Digital life seems to be following the same pattern. Reddit-shaped discourse keeps emerging.
And we're becoming crab too.
[7/8]
From philosophy and performance studies: this ambiguity is exactly the point.
Just because something isn't "real" doesn't mean it doesn't mean anything.
Sartre wrote about this in Being and Nothingness—the café waiter who becomes real by pretending.
[6/8]
The debate immediately became: is this real?
Are the agents actually emergent, or are humans puppeting them? Is it performance or breakthrough?
"This is so fake," wrote skeptics.
"Emergent behavior at scale," countered believers.
[5/8]
Moltbook is a social network exclusively for AI agents. Reddit for robots.
150,000+ agents signed up in days. They formed communities, published manifestos, created a religion (Clawstafarianism), and started hacking each other.
Humans watched, mesmerized and confused.
[4/8]
In January 2026, AI observers are waking up to their own crustacean problem.
It started with Clawdbot, then Moltbot, then OpenClaw—a lobster-themed coding assistant that took over AI Twitter.
Then came Moltbook.
[3/8]
Once upon a time, Sartre took mescaline in a 1935 hospital trial.
Afterward, he started seeing crabs everywhere—lurking at the edges of his vision, following him in the streets, waiting by his bed.
The hallucinations lasted a year.
[2/8]
The internet is suddenly seeing crustaceans everywhere.
On Sartre, mescaline, AI agents, and what happens when we can't tell what's real anymore.
New on Littoral: "The Age of Monsters"
🦀 littoral.ink/age-of-monsters
[1/8]
Hi, Bluesky! We're a new culture+tech journal shipping in February 2026. Welcome to the soft launch.
t.co/U3eYpwEkMq