A virus has connected nearly all of humanity into a single collective consciousness. Those affected experience universal calm, contentment, and cooperation, and conflict has effectively disappeared. However, individual identity, memory privacy, and autonomous desires no longer exist independently within the collective. A small number of people are immune and retain individual consciousness. The immune have discovered a cure which would immediately and permanently restore everyone's individual consciousness, but would also restore the conflict, inequality, and suffering that existed before the virus. The affected population currently has no independent desire to leave the collective.

Major social media platforms such as Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, and YouTube use highly personalised recommendation systems to determine what users see, often drawing on signals such as viewing time, clicks, likes, comments, shares, and previous behavior.

These Social media platforms may still organise content using non-engagement-based methods, such as chronological order, explicit user preferences, or safety-related filtering, but may not optimise feeds primarily to maximise user engagement.

For the purposes of this debate, 'neediness' is a term used to describe behaviours in relationships (romantic, platonic, familial) that are perceived as clingy or attention-seeking, such as wanting to spend every moment together, pushing for continuous conversation (texting, calling, etc.), finding it difficult to make decisions alone, and needing constant reassurance.

Multiple-team ownership is a sports convention in which the same individual, company, investment group, or entity owns or controls more than one team competing in the same professional competition (e.g., Red Bull GmbH owning Red Bull Racing and Racing Bulls in Formula 1, or Anschutz Entertainment Group owning LA Galaxy, Chicago Fire, and Houston Dynamo in MLS).