I was rewatching Max Headroom recently and my favorite episode stood out to me. It's about an addictive game show called "Whacketts" which is so mind-numbingly insipid that even the punk operator of the pirate TV station that runs the show wonders why it's so popular. Turns out that the Whacketts broadcast is interlaced with a signal that looks like rapidly changing hexadecimal numbers and functions as a "drug" that induces euphoria in anyone who is visually exposed to it.

When I was a kid I thought this was somewhat dodgy science fiction. As an adult in the age of Cocomelon and Skibidi Toilet, I'm not so sure.