What it is
Capture has three parts. Something was genuinely useful. It got redirected so that someone else benefits. And the people using it absorb the cost, then understand that cost as a personal failure, so they try to fix themselves for a problem the arrangement keeps producing.
Feeds that started as a way to keep up with friends and became machines for outrage are the obvious example. There’s also voluntary capture: choosing the outrage loop and the tribal validation over thinking for yourself.
To call something captured, I try to name the idea, who benefits, what the division accomplishes for them, and how the story gets into our behavior or our rules.
How it shows up for me
I’ve been captured. Whole evenings on my phone, feeling worse, and then calling it a discipline problem. Naming the arrangement didn’t fix me, but it helped me stop blaming only myself, and start changing the arrangement.