Let's face it. The human race is a mess. A hot mess. A not in the cute, slightly stressed, tousled hair way. The bleary eyed, one hour of sleep, hunched over, stained clothing type of hot mess.

For centuries, mankind has been rather bad with maintaining the goodwill of any sort of promising inventions made to help us out and make life easier.

Rockets for space exploration and astronomy? No, used for weapons of mass destruction. Chemicals to help grow more soybeans? Try again, chemical that can cause deaths and birth defects in high amounts and concentration. A great insecticide to help grow more crops for the hungry? Wrong, a chemical used in gas chambers during the Holocaust to end thousands, if not millions, of lives. Fire to help the human race evolve? Not even close, the first step to helping humans destroy each other for years to come.

As they teach us in our health classes on drugs and addiction, there are many different substances like caffeine or sugar that we think are harmless, but can lead to something dangerous like meth or cocaine. These are called 'gateway drugs'. Drink a cup of coffee and the next thing you know you'll be addicted to crack cocaine. Okay... maybe not that extreme, but that kind of teaching is almost an exact parallel to the Prometheus Effect. It takes something that can be used for good and it turns into something else that has the potential for terrible and evil.

When there is light there is shadow. Where there is good there is evil. Where there is life, their is potential for more evil than good.

Fire was the world's gateway drug to pain and anguish and despair. Literally.

Prometheus thought it would be great to help mankind out and do them a little favor. He gave them fire as a gift. Fire was meant to give warmth and light and life. But instead, the humans decided to take this gift and shape it into something that can be used for evil. They crafted weapons and boats and destroyed each other instead of using this new technology they had to advance and live peacefully.

Humans were such stupid primitive beings back then.

Wait, hold that thought, I just got a Snapchat from my friend.

Alright, what did I miss? Right, this is a problem that is very evident in today's world. Social media, a concept invented to link people all over the world and help people get closer to each other is the very thing driving us all apart. Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat, and Quotev (my own personal poison), all of these platforms are causing us to become isolated and socially awkward, stressed out and anxious, depressed and obese. None of these sound like they were intended effects. They never are. No one wakes up one morning and says, "Today I'm going to invent something to make the world obese and socially awkward once and for all!" and mean it in a positive way.

"It's for the birds yet we never stop tweeting
Ain't no fun if we're not in front of a computer screen
Let's go outside real life don't need a filter
We're just slaves to our cellular providers
What happened to good old fashioned talking to one another?
Can't say hello if it uses up my data
Snapchats and selfies, don't waste your time
I wanna see you with my own eyes"

~"Anti Social Media" by Will Jay

Technology has opened up a new gateway into a world of lying and deceit. Your identity could be stolen, you can be hacked, you can get cat fished on a dating site, you can lose everything. And for what? All you do is stay indoors staring at a screen, destroying your eyes and your brain, worrying about what total strangers think about you. Sounds super great. You could almost say technology is a gateway drug for the modern world.

Fire is the gateway drug of the beginning.

Technology is the gateway drug of the modern world.

And feudalism is the gateway drug of the medieval world (but that's a topic for another time).