(Loop) Dumb Scoller

Dumb Scoller It usually starts without thinking about it. You pick up your phone to check one thing. A message. A notification. Then your thumb moves on its own. Scroll. Scroll. Scroll. You’re not even sure what you’re looking for, but you’ll know it when you see it. A better post. A funnier clip. The perfect gif that says exactly what you can’t. Every swipe hits something different. One second you’re laughing. The next you’re irritated. Then jealous. Then inspired. Then numb. Your chest tightens a little but you don’t notice because your thumb keeps moving. High. Low. High. Low. It all blends together. You tell yourself you’re just passing time. But you’re also checking the numbers. Did anyone like it? Did it land? Did anyone see me? The follower count sits there quietly, like a scoreboard you didn’t agree to play on. Still, you refresh. You compare. You measure yourself against people you’ve never met. At some point, you aren’t scrolling anymore. You’re hunting. And then it happens. You find it. A gif. A clip. Something that stops your thumb mid-swipe. For a few seconds, everything feels still. It hits you in the chest. It says exactly what you’ve been trying to feel. It makes you laugh or breathe or almost tear up. For about twenty seconds, it feels like you found what you were looking for. Then the feeling fades. Your thumb moves again. Because somehow it wasn’t enough. And that’s the part that’s hard to admit. You found it. The thing you were searching for. The spark. The connection. So why did you keep going? Why do we keep going? Maybe the loop isn’t about the content. Maybe it’s about the hope that the next swipe will feel even better. Maybe we’re not looking for a gif at all. Maybe we’re looking for something to fill a space that scrolling can’t actually reach. Still, we go back. Still, we scroll. And somewhere between the highs and the lows, we turn into quiet little zombies, not because anyone forced us to, but because the loop feels easier than putting the phone down and sitting with ourselves. “I found exactly what I was looking for and it still wasn’t enough to make me stop.” AKA Chambo (Digital Art 2025-2026)