In the vast theatre of the internet, where avatars prance and wisdom is measured in likes and moral panic, a curious species thrives: the Digital Sage. Not a sage in the ancient sense, hardened by mud, fire, or the mysteries of the human heart, but rather a dishevelled figure—greasy, unwashed, radiating the peculiar glamour of neglect—obsessed with composting toilets and fond of photographing himself in vaguely menacing poses beside bewildered chickens.
A virtuoso not of wisdom, but of suggestion; a maestro not of truth, but of insinuation—dispensing commandments about life, thought, and domestic ingenuity, all from behind the faintly sticky glow of a second-hand webcam.
The Sage preaches independence, a life “beyond the system.” He extols home-schooling as a sacred duty, composting toilets as revolutionary innovation, and sprinkles his sermons with historical morsels about medicine and morality. Yet here lies the irony so rich it could be bottled and sold at Harrods: while he preaches emancipation from structures, he is scaffolded entirely by them—family wealth, hidden privileges, and, above all, the anxieties of those eager to believe. Independence, in his hands, is not liberation but transaction; “life outside the system” is little more than a meticulously engineered funnel, channeling attention, energy, and money directly toward him.
The Heroin Parable
Among his boldest claims is the oft-repeated parable of heroin: that this notorious substance, which makes both Victorian novelists and modern addiction counsellors sigh with despair, was once a respectable medicine, handed even to children, while pharmaceutical villains knowingly pushed it despite “clear signs” of harm.
Above it all flutters the triumphant banner, “We believe in science”—a declaration which, when weighed against the substance it adorns, reveals the intellectual depth of a trampled apricot: utterly insufficient, unfit even for jam, yet proudly paraded as if it were the fruit of wisdom itself.
Now, let us unfurl the historical record—for the Sage, in his customary fashion, glides only along the most convenient curve. A curve which, to the untrained eye, may resemble reason, but under closer inspection looks rather more like the brownish skid-mark of sophistry upon the otherwise respectable undergarments of history.
Diacetylmorphine—marketed by Bayer as “heroin”—was first synthesised in 1874 and promoted around the turn of the 20th century as a cough suppressant and pain reliever. It was indeed sold, and yes, regulation was, to be polite, woefully inadequate. Children, in some tragic cases, did encounter it via patent medicines in an age when paediatric ethics were still crawling out of the primordial swamp.
But the sensationalist leap—the idea of a vast, deliberate scheme to addict children to pad corporate pockets—is fiction of the most lurid kind, suited for penny dreadfuls and internet gurus hungry for disciples. Reality is far more mundane, bureaucratic, and far less entertaining: medical ignorance gave way to evidence, evidence to regulation, and heroin was steadily purged from respectable practice.
Pontifications and Extraction
Here sits the Digital Sage, pontificating on matters as vast and varied as corporate greed, untested products launched for profit, child-rearing, and even the moon and stars—filtered through a kaleidoscope of conspiracies and historical anecdotes. One listens, one waits… and waits some more.
Words tumble out in a ceaseless cascade, like a washing machine full of philosophical spaghetti, and when the spin cycle ends, nothing has settled. The narrative offers no clarity, no guidance, no discernible purpose beyond the performance itself. Is he warning? Inspiring? Teaching? Or merely perfecting the rare art of sounding profoundly important while saying almost nothing?
The aim, however, is unmistakable. Ceaseless chatter, sprawling digressions, dramatic pauses, solemn glances—these are not gestures of enlightenment but instruments of extraction. Attention, admiration, money—these are the true currencies mined from an audience lulled into confusion. The goal is never understanding. It is to convince the observer of something—anything—while padding the Sage’s coffers and keeping his followers tethered, paying for the privilege of listening to ambiguity itself. The irony, of course, is that this is precisely the same profit pursued by the pharmaceutical companies he so passionately denounces.
Here lies the delicious twist: the Sage denounces pharmaceutical profiteering with the solemnity of a prophet, while replicating the very same model he condemns in the very act of condemning it. Knowledge, in his world, is not shared but monetised; assistance is never offered, only packaged, priced, and sold. His followers, urged to distrust “the system,” unwittingly buy into another—one crafted not by accredited expertise, but by the Sage’s talent for weaving fear, aspiration, and moral indignation into an irresistible sales pitch.
The Anatomy of the Online Sect
Thus emerges the dependency of the online sect—no less corrosive to health and spirit than heroin itself. In his eagerness to justify his parables, the Sage does not illuminate truth; he merely etches his own portrait in crystalline clarity. And so unfolds the anatomy of the sect: a hierarchy that enriches the few while impoverishing the many.
Its architecture is deceptively simple. At the summit lounges the Sage, radiant with borrowed wisdom and greasy conviction; beneath him, a loyal cadre of imitators, parroting his tone with the precision of malfunctioning echo chambers (of course, the motive here is purely financial—the hope that one day, or even immediately, through collective effort, they will monetize someone’s vulnerability); and at the base, a restless congregation, paying in money, in time, and in the fragile hope that they are not being deceived. Followers are encouraged to invest—time, money, even the future of their children—into a digital construct whose primary purpose is the enrichment of the Sage and the perpetuation of his circle of privileged disciples. The ostensible independence he champions is illusory; participation binds the follower to a system of exploitation, ironically one of the very structures he claims to transcend.
Those who part with money, hours, and trust are not liberated; they are quietly subordinated, subsidising the Sage’s comfort while surrendering their agency and the future of their children. The liberation promised is a papier-mâché façade, crumbling at the slightest touch of critical thought. This is not education; it is extraction. Not guidance, but grooming. A system that feeds on trust the way a parasite feeds on blood—always hungry, never satisfied, always insisting it is doing you a favour.
The Theatre of Fear
The tragedy lies not merely in the structure, but in its seductive efficiency. For what is sold here is not knowledge but dulled dependence, not liberation but the illusion of escape. Followers, weary of doubt and dazzled by promises, surrender judgment first in whispers, then in shouts, until silence hardens into complicity. Each payment is dressed as investment, each hour masquerades as growth, yet the returns are as hollow as the composting sermons from which they spring.
And so the sect endures—not by elevating minds, but by anaesthetizing them; not by cultivating independence, but by manufacturing a dependence so profound that to question feels like betrayal, and to leave feels like exile—the same sensation as heroin withdrawal, right?
The therapeutic insight is unavoidable: to follow blindly is to abdicate judgment. To entrust one’s mind, household, and progeny to performance over substance is not emancipation, but exploitation. And while heroin has long been reined in by regulation, figures like the Digital Sage roam unchecked, hawking ideology under the guise of care, leaving behind the same trail of dependency and harm—now wrapped in hashtags and subscription packages.
Science, contrary to the Sage’s insinuations, does not demand faith. It demands evidence, scrutiny, and peer review. To reduce it to a villainous pantomime is to confuse human greed with the method designed to expose it. Even the pharmaceutical companies he demonizes have been corrected, reined in, or sometimes brought to heel—precisely because science provides the tools to reveal harm and demand change. To dismiss it wholesale is a luxury only those untouched by real illness or tragedy can afford.
It is very convenient to mock and babble, spitting accusations that medicines are poison, while your children and loved ones are healthy and you yourself are untouched by desperation and hopelessness. I wonder whether the slogan "we believe in science" would be applied with obvious irony and ridicule—not to a silly video, but to a scene on an operating table where you lie, hoping to survive. Would you accept that the surgeon operating on you possesses the same competence as you?
A Mirror of Method
The heroin parable becomes a mirror—not of pharmaceutical villainy, but of the Sage’s own method. the Sage plucks a sliver of truth, drapes it in theatrical horror, and parades it as revelation. The aim is not enlightenment but submission: to make followers tremble, doubt, and pay. It is theatre, yes—but theatre of fear, with the audience bound by invisible strings of dependence.
The irony, sharpened to a lethal edge, is this: while preaching freedom, he fabricates captivity. While extolling scepticism, he cultivates blind faith. And while mocking the abuses of science, he peddles abuses of his own—unchecked, unregulated, infinitely more dangerous for being dressed as liberation.
Both Sage and heroin, in their own times, target the same vulnerable currency: children and money. Both exploit, both harm—one with bottles labelled “medicine,” the other with sermons labelled “liberation.” The forms differ, yet the mechanism is identical: trust perverted into profit, vulnerability transmuted into fuel.
And when this digital guru—this coach, this self-anointed beacon of compost and feathers, this so-called mentor—invokes fear, moral panic, and historical half-truths to sell you independence, remember the irony. His gospel of freedom is nothing more than dependence in disguise; his theatre of awakening, a sideshow of manipulation.
To dismiss the Digital Sage with haughty laughter is tempting; to obey him is disastrous. The wiser path is to dissect him—as one might dissect a frog in a classroom—not out of cruelty, but as an act of learning. In his posturing, contradictions, and theatrics lies the perfect specimen of what not to be, and what not to follow.
In recognising this, the reader cultivates the only true freedom: a mind untethered, sceptical, and unbought.
The Heroin Parable and a Postscript on Science, Fear, and Responsibility
To separate fact from fiction, it is worth examining the historical record:
1874: English chemist Charles Romley Alder Wright first synthesised diacetylmorphine (heroin) by acetylating morphine with acetic anhydride in the laboratory of St. Mary’s Hospital, London.
1897: German chemist Felix Hoffmann, working for the pharmaceutical company Bayer, independently synthesised diacetylmorphine while attempting to produce codeine. Hoffmann discovered that the compound was more potent than morphine and named it “heroin” (from the German heroisch, meaning “heroic”).
1898: Bayer began producing and marketing heroin as a remedy for pain and cough, promoting it as a safe alternative to morphine.
1910: The product “heroin” was withdrawn from the market due to mounting evidence of its addictive potential and harmful effects.
The lesson here is not about scandal or conspiracy; it is about context. Medicine evolves, regulation improves, and history shows that substances once considered safe may later be restricted—but always under scrutiny, evidence, and public health guidance. This historical reflection provides a mirror: while some online figures dramatise dangers for influence or profit, real-world oversight and science aim to protect and correct. Followers are far better served by critical thinking and verifiable evidence than by sensationalised narratives.
It is worth closing with a sober reflection. The modern landscape remains fraught with risk: the relentless push of inadequately tested medicines or products to market, sometimes prioritised above safety indicators for profit, is a troubling reality. Equally perilous are the self-styled online “enlightened” gurus, whose manipulative narratives—substituting fear, half-truths, or ideological rhetoric for genuine expertise—prey on trust, extract wealth, and warp the judgment of those who follow them.
The deliberate targeting of families and children is not new; it has existed throughout history, persists in the present, and, unless vigilance prevails, will continue into the future. These self-styled, fraudulently enlightened guides are little different from any harmful substance or product. They trade in fear, outrage, and moral panic, convincing parents to withdraw children from school, ignore medical advice, or socially isolate them—not out of necessity, but as a demonstration of ideological allegiance or so-called “independence.” The cost here is far greater than any subscription fee or donation: a child denied education, left unwell, or socially isolated suffers harm that cannot easily be undone. The cheap thrill of fear and scepticism, the seduction of a charismatic but incompetent guide, can have lifelong consequences for the most vulnerable.
Yet, objectively, we must be fair. Just as with medicines and products—there are poisons and there are genuine marvels—not all mentors should be painted with the same brush. Truly competent, ethical teachers do exist. The key is vigilance: open your eyes, think critically, and refuse to surrender what they seek to take from you. We are not speaking merely of money, time, or future opportunities; we are speaking of your own capacity for independent thought.
The prudent observer, therefore, must cultivate scepticism, demand evidence, and distinguish genuine advice from theatrical persuasion. True freedom is not claimed through allegiance to personalities or ideologies, but earned through reason, critical thinking, and the refusal to allow fear, ideology, or profit motives to dictate the upbringing of children or the stewardship of one’s own health.
In short: trust evidence, question performance, and never exchange independence—or (a child’s) well-being—for the illusion of authority.