This component is almost always present, even though it typically wasn’t part of the initial design of a Bummer machine. Fake people are present in unknown but vast numbers and establish the ambience. Bots, AIs, agents, fake reviewers, fake friends, fake followers, fake posters, automated catfishers: a menagerie of wraiths. Invisible social vandalism ensues. Social pressure, which is so influential in human psychology and behaviour, is synthesised. The more specifically we can draw a line around a problem, the more solvable that problem becomes. Our problem is not the internet, smartphones, smart speakers, or the art of algorithms; the problem is the Bummer machine. And the core of the machine is not a technology, exactly, but a style of business plan that spews out perverse incentives and corrupts people. It’s not even a widely used business plan. Outside of China, the only tech giants that fully depend on this system are Facebook and Google. The other three of the big five tech companies indulge occasionally, because it is normalised these days, but they don’t depend on it. A few smaller Bummer companies are also influential, like Twitter, though they often struggle.