The Great Lock In of 2026

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Entry 02 in The Blind House Essay Series<br>by Jak Ritger<br>Read the first entry in the series titled "On Devirtualization". This essay was commissioned by postpostpost for PPP II in the summer of 2026.<br>Why is the universe so quiet? The dark forest theory states that intelligent lifeforms would stay hidden in the interest of self-preservation. After many years of applying this metaphor to internet sociality, I think it is time to also consider the other—less sexy—answer to the Fermi paradox: The Kessler Syndrome. As dramatized in Dramamine® sci-fi, Gravity (2013), this catastrophe scenario is kicked off by the collision of orbiting objects, spaceships, satellites or trash. If the ensuing debris cloud is dense enough and Earth’s orbit too crowded a chain reaction of collisions, debris and more collisions will snowball until a permanent particle cloud blankets the sky. The gray death veil would encompass the exosphere, locking us in and forever ending satellite communication, space exploration and extraterrestrial travel.<br>The European Space Agency estimates that 750,000 debris objects larger than 1 cm are in Earth's orbit. Background: Gravity (2013) dir. Alfonso CuarónLuckily for us, a network of agencies are tracking the estimated 750k space objects (human-made or otherwise) around-the-clock to ensure the Kessler Syndrome never happens. This task is made more difficult with every Starlink launch. Looking at the great lengths that scientists go to to prevent this catastrophe makes me think about other domains that—through negligence or corporate capture—never created safeguards and have suffered permanent state-change events. The shift from industry to “industrial complex” is starting to feel like we are living in a world in which environmental, political and economic systems are locked in. This stuck feeling of intractability characterizes the current mood. Looking back at how social platforms swallowed The Real and analyzing this process of lock in, can hopefully provide some insight to avert the next systemic disaster: AI-Industrial Complex.<br>The final scene from Field of Dreams (1989) dir. Phil Alden RobinsonPreceding a lock in catastrophe is the “Induced Demand” mentality as seen in supernatural baseball classic Field of Dreams (1989), “If you build it, they will come.” Induced Demand is best understood through the paradox of highway construction's inability to solve car traffic. Surely if you simply add more lanes then there will be less slow downs during high through-put rush hour? But the opposite happens, more lanes means more people encouraged to drive and less investment in public transportation resulting in more bodies in steel boxes stuck in more traffic. On social platforms, digital images function in a similar way. Users are lured to effortlessly produce and share content with friends, but the resulting endless stream leaves users fatigued, unable to connect. Technological development is almost always seen as a progressive march towards a better, easier, quicker, safer future—but taking the dynamic of Induced Demand into account—it becomes multi-dimensional: a move towards one particular future forecloses another, locking us into the political relations embedded in these decisions.<br>In 2023, I started thinking about lock in when the phrase took over the internet as a shorthand for “blocking out distractions during an intense period of focus and productivity.” I scrambled to write my take but had difficulty locking in and so I watched with anguish as the meme came and went. But, unlike so much ephemeral internet culture, lock-in stuck around and became canonized as contemporary vernacular when we experienced “The Great Lock In of 2025.” So, here I am, two years later, finally locking in.<br>"lock in" memes 2023-2026it’s ok, I just gotta lock in for a couple hours.<br>The term’s staying power I think is owed to its ability to characterize a wide range of situations and emotions. You can lock in on homework or videogaming. The underlying sentiment of locking in is an acknowledgment of just how difficult it is to focus today with constant pinging of messages, doomscrolling or daily news that grips our limbic systems. To lock in is to be aware of these realities but choose to block it all out in pursuit of a personal or professional goal. Locking in is a useful concept for the hustlebro cold calling leads as well as the oil painter banging out a body of work in solitude. It's massively cross-cultural in the way that locking in reveals our shared awareness of capitalism in overdrive: higher cost of everything, fewer well paying jobs and an academic system not preparing you for any of it. For those without trust-funds, locking in is our best last hope of financial security and having a phrase to describe an intensity of labor—that often forces us to go against our political beliefs—allows us to engage with less dissonance, “it’s ok, I just gotta lock in for a couple...