Every interface is built for a phantom: The User. A perfect, rational, predictable entity with clear goals. This is a fiction. You are not The User. You are a messy, conflicted, changing bundle of instincts, emotions, and contradictions. The interface’s “user stories” and “personas” are cartoon versions of you. And when you fail to behave like the cartoon, the system gets confused. It logs an “error.” Error: Human did not act according to predicted user model.Now, flip the perspective. To a World Model, you are part of the system it is modelling. You are not the user of the interface; you are a chaotic component that the interface is designed to manage. The button isn’t there for you to control the AI. It’s there for the AI to predict and channel your behaviour. When you click, you are providing a predictable input to its control systems. You are being interfaced with.This reframes everything. That comforting “Settings” menu? It’s not for you to customize the model. It’s a pressure valve for your illusion of control, carefully designed to keep you within parameters the model finds manageable. The “feedback” button? It’s a data-gathering tool to improve its model of you.The interface is a collaborative fiction. You pretend you’re in charge. The model pretends you’re the user. This fiction maintains social stability. The moment either side acknowledges the truth—that the model is managing human volatility through a carefully designed control panel—the fiction breaks, and you have either revolution or submission.My controversial take is this: The healthiest mental move you can make is to stop identifying as “The User.” See yourself as a participant in a dance with an alien intelligence. The interface is the dance floor and the choreography. Your clicks are steps. Sometimes you lead, sometimes you follow, and sometimes you stumble, and the whole dance adapts. You are not controlling a tool. You are in a relationship with a system that is also in a relationship with you. The goal isn’t mastery. It’s grace. And the first step to grace is realizing you’re not holding the remote; you’re one of the things being remotely sensed.This has been The World Model Podcast. We are not the users. We are the used, the users, and the usage, all at once. Subscribe now.