How Social Media Melted My Mind

Why Amazon, Apple, Facebook, & Google Are to Blame

The author in January 2020, shortly before his schizophrenic breakdown.

In January 2020, right at the start of the COVID-19 epidemic, I suffered the worst mental health crisis of my life. With my life partner of twenty years watching from the sidelines, I was picked up off the streets of Redwood City, California by the local police and escorted to a mental health crisis center for immediate assistance. Less than 72 hours later, I was transferred to a Behavioral Health Center in Santa Clara County (footsteps from Apple’s headquarters in Cupertino) where I was diagnosed with Level I bipolar disorder and determined to have suffered a complete schizophrenic breakdown that could easily have cost me my life. I was 45 years old and had been unemployed for more than 4 years at the time. Months of endless online job applications & reckless engagement on social media had brought me to the brink of disaster. And Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google are all to blame.

One of the author’s more bizarre staged social media stunts intended to attract the attention of Amazon.

It has taken me two years fully to recover and to summon the courage to tell my story on Medium. The details I am about to share have never been recounted before, not even to close friends or family. I intend them as a cautionary tale of the dangers of engaging too…