I clicked on an Instagram post about a happy dog – and opened a hellish portal

I’m arriving at the social media party so late that the lights are on and the floor is being swept. As a result, I’ve only recently learned that if you look at anything for two seconds, it teaches your algorithm that this is all you want to see. A cheerful dog was the gateway drug. Now, I am accidentally on Death Instagram. It is not very LOL. The lengthy caption on Fido’s joyful, tail-waggy photo unfortunately revealed that he’d just crossed the rainbow bridge. This information was not delivered succinctly, though, meaning I lingered long enough to inform Mark Zuckerberg that this was very much my jam. Photos of happy couples began to pop up, people I didn’t know or even recognise, which made me curious as to why I was being shown them. Again and again, like a lab rat in an experiment failing to cotton on despite the electric shocks, I read the accompanying words, only to discover one of them was announcing the sad passing of the other. Fast forward to today and my feed is wall-to-wall bereaved (and Harry Styles, whom I have never been more grateful for, promoting his new album Kiss All the Time.
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