Other Factions

Antisocial Media

Sunburst and its spinoff companies design many of the iPhone apps protesters use. These apps carry tiny amounts of taint, seeping into the mind the more one uses them, and many people, within and outside the movement, use these apps almost every waking minute. Tempers shorten on hot days when protesters, shoulder to shoulder, pressed together in a too-small parking lot, or police start harassing campers. Bidden by strange dreams and unconscious urges, protesters scrawl symbols of the Wyrm on their signs. Anger grows, mob mentality sets in, and a legitimate rally becomes a riot, their message lost amid vandalism and police brutality.

Nor are the networking sites whose popularity boomed in the new millennium safe from the Wyrm’s taint. Millions use sites like Facebook, thinking them places where they can freely communicate their thoughts — or re-post “dad spam” emails and political sound bites. Arguments devolve into insults and threats, obscuring any legitimate points users may have. Friends and family turn on one another in heated fights. When former lov­ ers update their statuses to show new relationships, their exes grow jealous and trace amounts of taint contained in banner ads helps fuel this envy. Designed to bring people together, the Wyrm’s influence instead tears them apart.

Millions also play Facebook and browser games designed by startups and small groups of programming-savvy students, usually unpaid interns and consultants of companies like Sunburst. These games, like the ever-popular ResortCraft and its siblings, have players clear-cutting rainforests or damming reservoirs in order to build expansive resorts and play tycoon. Small but pervasive amounts of Wyrm-taint contained in games like these inure the younger, entitled generations to environmental devastation and unscrupulous business practices. In many cases, the taint need do nothing at all, as human society does all the work instead.

Like so many other of Pentex’s operations, it is nearly impossible to shut any of this down. Masked as legitimate programs and advertisements, obscured by the sheer vol­ ume of internet content, much of it is entirely human in origin and extremely questionable. No authorities can even begin to tackle the problem. The Garou are not so helpless, sending data-spirits to crash servers, hack accounts or act as sapient spambots, posting positive messages that preach environmental safety and peace between neighbors. These efforts sometimes slow down what feels like an endless rushing tide, but the taint, al­ ways the taint seeps in through these digital claw marks.