Doomscroll

Alexxxxx

A split screen. Alexxxxx is on the left, talking down into his phone camera. He is in his mid-twenties, unkempt and has mouth seems to be stuck in a permanent smirk. He is constantly on the move, his surroundings ever changing.

A title on Alexxxxx's video reads:

DAY ONE

On the right-hand screen, a static image of a bare, wooden tabletop.

Good morning! Today we're going to be doing the coin-flip trend, my way. This guy always takes forever to get started so I'm going to explain how this works instead of staring at an empty tabletop in silence. About six months ago this channel appeared called Accountancy Tips For All. Sounds boring, right? Oh, it is. Way more than you can imagine. As far as I can tell, this channel has never posted any accountancy tips, or any kind of content at all except for the video we're watching now. Every day, at around 6am UK time, they flip a coin. It's not a normal coin, it's completely blank on one side and on the other it has this weird emoji symbol scratched into it. You'll see in a minute, maybe, depends if it's heads or tails.

It's the same thing every time. They flip the coin, it lands on the table and it either shows the blank side, tails, or the emoji side, heads. Somehow, because of the collective stupidity of the people on this app, people have started interpreting this as a sign of whether to leave your house that day or not. If it's heads, you're good to go. If it's tails, you need to stay indoors. I have no idea how it turned into this, I'm sure I could work it out if I could be bothered, but I suspect there was one person who did it first and then someone else did it and suddenly it's a trend so everyone has to do it.

Oh, here we go, it's starting.

A coin lands on the tabletop. The side facing the camera is blank.

Okay, it's tails, that means I shouldn't leave the house today. But that's not what I'm about, you all know that, so we're going to do the opposite of what the coin says. We're going to go outside today.

Alexxxxx's background changes as he opens his front door and steps outside.

Here we are! All good so far. I'm just going to go about my day like a normal person and I'll report back tomorrow if anything bad happened, which it won't. Make sure you watch this video to the end so you can follow me as I debunk this stupid—

Hold on a second...

Alexxxxx stops, looking to his left and right. There is a loud beeping sound. He walks, then there is the sound of screeching breaks and the phone falls to the ground.

The video ends.

***

A split screen. Alexxxxx is on the left, talking down into his phone camera.

A title on Alexxxxx's video reads:

DAY TWO

On the right, a static image of a bare, wooden tabletop.

Good morning! I'm sorry about how that last video ended. I've had a lot of concerned messages and comments, and I'll be honest, I didn't reply on purpose because I thought you'd be more likely to come back and check out today's video if you wanted to find out if I was alive or not. Basically, my video was attached to the coin video so it cut off when that one stopped. I'm fine, I was using a pedestrian crossing, I had a green light and this car sped towards me, they obviously didn't spot the red light until the last minute and nearly hit me. But they didn't, so we're all good. Other than that, which I'm not even counting as a thing, yesterday was entirely uneventful.

I'm trying to remember where I got to explaining where this trend came from. So, when it started, apparently the rule was you only had to do what the coin said if it came up on your feed. But, as we all know, if you watch a video all the way through then the algorithm thinks you want to see more of that content and shows it to you again. Watch this thing a couple of days in a row and it's going to be the first thing you see, every single day.