Pay-to-Play Democracy: Meta’s Premium Reality Pack

Panel 1 (Foreground): A long, airport-style check-in counter split in two. On the left, a huge, overflowing line of ordinary users under a flickering sign: “FREE META: ADS, DATA MINING, BASIC REALITY.” People look exhausted, bathed in pop-up ads and notification bubbles raining from the ceiling. A bored Meta rep in a hoodie waves them through like cattle. Panel 2 (Right side of the same counter): A velvet-roped VIP lane with only a few sleek influencers, corporate execs, and ‘creators’ walking on a plush carpet that literally says “SUBSCRIBE TO EXIST.” Above them, a polished neon sign: “META PLUS ULTRA: PREMIUM AI ILLUSIONS & CONTROL TOOLS.” A smiling Meta agent in a blazer offers them sleek AR headsets labeled “AI VIDEO,” “ANONYMOUS STORY VIEWING,” and “FOLLOWER INSIGHTS.” Background (Far wall): A giant, stylized Mark Zuckerberg hologram looms over everything like a tech-age Big Brother, holding three glowing app orbs—Instagram, Facebook, WhatsApp—like planets in his hands. Tiny legal text scrolls around him like a halo but is unreadable. Visual gags: On the ‘FREE’ side, someone tries to click a button labeled ‘Privacy Settings’ that keeps sliding away, replaced by ‘Upgrade.’ On the ‘PREMIUM’ side, a well-dressed political consultant taps a dashboard labeled “Narrative Tuning (Beta)” while a lobbyist peers at a tablet labeled “Voter Sentiment Insights – Paywalled.” In the ceiling above both lines, a giant funnel labeled “USER DATA” drains into a vault door stamped “META REVENUE STREAMS,” with a smaller pipe branching off to a shadowy doorway marked “GOVERNMENT ACCESS – ENTERPRISE TIER.” Final detail (Bottom corner, small sign): A freestanding placard near the exit reads: “CORE SERVICES REMAIN ‘FREE’*” with a microscopic asterisk note so tiny it’s just a gray blur.

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