By: Katie Walkley, Peak Associate

Most doomscrollers have heard of the dopamine detox — a total abandonment of easy dopamine hits by purging all social media. For most, this challenge is temporary — like a failed New Year’s resolution. In the tragic case of poor SFU student Matthew Jones, we get the rare consequence of a dopamine detox. This is the story of how this young man accidentally reverse-engineered generative AI . . . and what it cost him. 

It started when he stumbled across the concept of the dopamine detox on WikiHow. He felt a burst of inspiration to finally detach from the internet that had stolen his time, rotted his brain, and took his job from him (couldn’t stop watching tung tung tung sahur, the personified baseball bat, in the cubicle). He couldn’t even go to sleep without asking ChatGPT what time he should wake up. However, he of course had to scroll for a couple more hours before he decided it was time to abandon technology once and for all.

This wasn’t his first rodeo. In fact, he had already tried to detach himself from his phone last year. He used a flip phone when he was out on the town and had a smartphone he always kept taped to his living room wall for important business uses only, such as banking, online dating, and asking ChatGPT what he should eat that day. He failed after his situationship left him and he could only be comforted by ten-hour “Elden Ring lore explained” videos. 

With the clarity of a man on a mission at 2:00 a.m., Matthew put all of his modern technology into a box. His phone, smart speaker, and his roommate’s pacemaker receiver (much to the dismay and livelihood of his roommate). This time, he duct-taped the box closed and put it somewhere he knew he would never be tempted by: underneath a West Mall parking meter. Which he avoids like it’s his own personal kryptonite. 

The next day, he faced the first obstacle of his new, technology-less life: how to invite his friend Eric to the pub that night. He didn’t have time to ring him up on a rotary telephone (in fact, he didn’t even know his phone number), so he sent a message by carrier pigeon. Unbeknownst to him, Eric endures a debilitating pigeon-phobia.

A couple days later, with Eric still running away from the pigeon, Matthew was sitting on the soccer field on his day off. With all his time free from technological temptation, he started having independent thoughts, which he shared with passerbys. Eventually, swarms of SFU students were lining up to speak with the enlightened one. A common excursion became, “going to chat,” as in literally chatting with Matthew.

To get to the bottom of all this hoopla, The Peak had the privilege of conducting an interview, during which he gave this statement on how he became Chat.

“I was laying in this field, and I started seeing visions! I started thinking, what should I have for lunch? And then something deep inside of me would answer. Or, what if I learned to juggle? Possibilities flew all around me! I was like one of those online idea generators. At some point, people started calling upon visions from me, asking what colour they should paint their kitchen, or baring their souls to me and asking for advice, or giving me their textbooks so I could make a study guide. And my grand visions had answers for everything!”

Thanks to Matthew’s visions, ChatGPT’s web traffic went down exponentially on Burnaby Mountain and the environment began to heal itself. While waiting to chat, people even experienced their own independent thoughts. When OpenAI CEO, Sam Altman, caught wind of the gathering of “irl chatters,” he came to visit Matthew just before dawn on the fifth day of his dopamine detox. An anonymous witness reports that Altman opened a laptop into Matthews face and sucked his body through the screen. When everyone awoke, they discovered a data centre where the field had been and instructions on how to use a new application called ChatMatthew.

Days later, the pigeon caught up with Eric. The two collapsed with exhaustion on the lawn and he finally read his message, “Yo dawg, wanna meet at the pub l8r?”