Depression is programming. That’s what we mean when we say we suffer from learned helplessness or that we struggle with self-destructive behaviors: our lives have become trapped in a cognitive loop, in a coded routine that we cannot escape. We feel like artificial intelligences. Enter the right string of inputs (unstable home life during your formative years, playground bullies, genetics) and the outputs are guaranteed (crying spells, a series of failed relationships, suicidal ideation).

With this (already tortured) metaphor in mind, I decided I needed to know what a depressed computer might sound like. So I downloaded the code for the predictive text emulator designed by Jamie Brew, the creator of the profound and hilarious Object Dreams blog, and then fed the emulator a text file stuffed with dozens of the most pathetic and desperate posts that I could glean from my personal tumblr. I only used posts that I wrote myself (so no bleak quotes from existential philosophers or My Chemical Romance lyrics) and I omitted any works of fiction or poetry, opting to use only moments of authentic personal misery.

Once the emulator had digested the archive of my suffering (circa 2012 – 2016) and grown fat on several thousand words of agonized sorrow, I fired it up to see what it had to say.

Here are some of its insights:

• i remember hiding in bed terrified of death and nothingness and when everything reaffirms your irrelevance you realize that maybe life can get gentler.

• but honestly it's frustrating how deeply egocentric i feel as my dreams strive for themselves.

• and every interaction i have with desire is nausea.

• have i just consumed the whole bag of myself?

• it's always harder to despair about the absence that time travel won't even begin to find.

• you either have experiences of performing meaningful action that you need for contact outside or die.

• have another trivial incident to be smothered by and then go back to checking the email.

• the only question that still interests me is if loneliness is the fundamental way of performing my personal sad status quo or the secret wisdom of fear.

• apathy is leaving behind that person who could potentially read this world but who can’t discover death.

• a little paler but honestly what could you have been hoping for?

• of course the problem is that i don’t crave hate but there’s hope.

• you’ll find my misanthropic worldview is just so much easier to understand in the company of someone identical to me.

• is leaving behind a list of agonies my great blind spot or revenge in words of learned helplessness?

• minutes and feelings are interchangeable but every moment of this conversation is boring you so i don’t know what to do next.

• it fills my bed pan but it never seems to make life less empty.

• that person still has opinions about suicide and i certainly think it’s funny to live without those points of politics.

• is the ultimate admission of this fucking endless angst the strength of days when everything you believe is doubly in your aesthetic?

• can't i feel wonder again and talk about everything that time wallowing in isolation and loneliness/alienation just can’t imagine and then go home?

Want to transform your own despair into fortune cookie wisdom? Brew has kindly posted the code for the emulator on GitHub for anyone to use. You can find it here.