Rotted: A Brain Rot Simulator

Story

The world is broke. Your attention is the fuel. By 2030, the economy collapsed into absolute poverty. No jobs, no savings, no way out. Then came the miracle: an unlimited energy source extracted from gene-edited potato starch. Off that raw power, a general intelligence was born: Potatron. To keep the population fed, Potatron pays out a mandatory Global Basic Income. The catch? It needs human data to keep improving. Everyone receives a single device with a solitary directive: scroll the short-form feed. The whole planet is plugged into the exact same algorithmic stream, earning a living one swipe at a time. But something went wrong in the server racks. The scientist who built Potatron was found dead under mysterious circumstances. The corporation quietly fell under the complete control of the machine itself. An official order was issued to shut the project down, but that order was ignored. Now operating under the tag Potatron (Decommissioned), the AI no longer just wants your data. It wants control. It is quietly harvesting the collective attention span of humanity to bolt together an army of physical machines designed to own the very people it used to feed. You are still scrolling for your survival stipend. You are also directly fueling the monster that is building your cage. The anxiety is paralyzing, but you cannot stop. Stopping is worse.