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Dopamine Fracking

• yoyomaindydjsj 3mo ago
  [dead]
• bsimpson 3mo ago
  He's right - that phrase evokes what he means better than many alternatives. But this feels like an article where you get all the useful info in the title. The rest is just a rant about the modern internet being bad for your brain.
  • aaron695 3mo ago
    [dead]
  • froh 3mo ago
    i got much more out of it and it's intelligently written I see this structure: * introduce dopamine fracking * the wonderful strawberry analogy to what we loose, personally, by giving in to the substitue for the real thing * how they (the author) managed to in baby steps turn down attempts at fracking _their_ dopamine: through awareness of what's happening and what were missing because of it so until there is some bigger scale solution, we can at least self regulate. and overall the article is a positive note in difficult times. I especially loved the strawberry analogy.
    • DaanDL 3mo ago
      Same here, I enjoyed it too. A lot of people are nitpicking on the strawberry analogy, but there is certainly something to be said about the commodification of everything.
    • zigman1 3mo ago
      I agree with you, also about the strawberry analogy. I was quite surprised to read that author is 22 years old. So many young smart people around!
    • killerstorm 3mo ago
      There's an unresolved tension within the article: * some parts of it imply it's about higher intensity, 'bigger' dopamine hits * while other parts talk about commodification, i.e. making these 'dopamine hits' as cheaply as possible, with as little other substance as possible Not the same thing. There's a connection - reducing 'substance' make it more 'pure' dopamine, also there's some loudness war between different sources. But still, in the end people generally don't feel anything intense when scrolling tiktok, it's just enough to grab attention. I guess more direct analogy with fracking might work better: it squeezes dopamine hit out of things which normally don't warrant attention.
      • froh 3mo ago
        "commodification" (and "industrialization" and "over-consumption") were just alternative terms they tried before settling on "dopamine fracking". that's it. and exactly because theses terms are not synonyms at all and exactly because they fit worse, the author settles on fracking: squeezing a ressource out of our brains no matter the collateral damage, as you then identified.
• protocolture 3mo ago
  "movies becoming too Marvel" I dunno, I love hating modern thing as much as the next guy, but this is just people being hyper sensitive. Your average 80s action comedy quips the same as any Marvel film.
  • sandcat_ 3mo ago
    I think the criticism isn’t around Marvel films being Marvel, but rather the reaction to Marvel films being popular to make every film like a Marvel film. Can’t really comment if that’s true, though I’ve definitely noticed an increase in films becoming franchises, etc, but I think that was the implication.
    • protocolture 3mo ago
      I see "It was just a marvel\disney film" as a substitute for thoughtful criticism on basically every film these days. Usually they say they hate the humour. Even though if anything theres more humourless films these days than ever before.
• MitPitt 3mo ago
  Humanity was fracking dopamine from art by first painting on cave walls, then oil on canvas, and eventually we got cinematography and video games. Author sounds like a luddite. Feel free to paint on cave walls. Nothing's happening to real strawberries either.
  • Waterluvian 3mo ago
    “Grog are you in there dopamine fracking again?” “It’s not what it looks like! Gawd, just leave me alone mom!”
  • profsummergig 3mo ago
    Also, I'd guess that more strawberries are grown today than ever before. After their artificial essence was created in the labs. I enjoyed the article. It was very evocative.
  • lelanthran 3mo ago
    > Humanity was fracking dopamine from art by first painting on cave walls, then oil on canvas, and eventually we got cinematography and video games. I don't think you know what "fracking" means. It's a high-pressure, high-resource extraction method that produces high volume initially but quickly falls off, requiring a new source. Laboriously painting a picture to get a dopamine hit is not the same as swiping up while doomscrolling.
• apt-apt-apt-apt 3mo ago
  I like the idea of the term, but would want capture these: 1. Refinement, where things are made super-concentrated and pure 2. Supernormal stimuli, where the effect becomes unnaturally intense 3. How easy it becomes to consume the result Something like 'dopamine super-refinement'.
  • vincnetas 3mo ago
    digital mdma synthetic, pure, overly stimulating, taps into base mechanics of joy creation, prone to abuse but on the same time you still want it and tell yourself that you can control it. and sometimes you really do.
  • deleted 3mo ago
    [deleted]
  • fssys 3mo ago
    none of these things are that important, or even particularly true. The greater effect is social/cultural. Wholesale capture of industries/social phenomena by technocapital. Describing everything in terms of neurotransmitters is rather silly, doesnt even really describe the experience of the individual.
• sd_mikey 3mo ago
  This seems in the same ballpark as the book Attensity!, which coined the term human fracking. https://www.theguardian.com/books/2026/jan/18/how-can-we-defend-ourselves-from-the-new-plague-of-human-fracking https://www.theguardian.com/books/2026/jan/18/how-can-we-def...
• ares623 3mo ago
  Damn, that's a good way to describe it.
• johnathandos 3mo ago
  "All fixed, fast-frozen relations, with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices and opinions, are swept away, all new-formed ones become antiquated before they can ossify. All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses, his real conditions of life, and his relations with his kind."
• sugabush 3mo ago
  Read the book Attensity they coined this
• pmg101 3mo ago
  A deeper dive would go into why this seems to be such a quintessentially American pursuit. I'd speculate perhaps something to do with capitalism, and also maybe a culture made out of people coming together from other cultures was more able to throw out "baggage"(ie context) and distil pure experiences.
• andrewvu0203 3mo ago
  [dead]
• aryangshah 3mo ago
  I've been maintaining a log of myself, instead of dopamine franking, I call this 'seeker behavior.' Frankly, adding a name to it is helping me avoid the high and letting me enjoy things more as time goes by, try it out!
• _fuchs 3mo ago
  Are there good recourses on common pattern/ techniques used for “dopamine fracking“? We all know a hand full and dome are briefly touched on (emotional triggers). But a list of things to look out for would be nice.
• fsiefken 3mo ago
  This dopamine phracking reminds me of neal stephenson's "snow crash". "[.] a counter-virus (known as the nam-shub of Enki), which, when delivered, stopped the Sumerian language from being processed by the brain and led to the development of other, less literal languages, giving birth to the Babel myth. L. Bob Rife had been collecting Sumerian artifacts and developed the drug Snow Crash to make the public vulnerable to new forms of me, which he would control." -- wikipedia, Snow Crash
• Aurornis 3mo ago
  This article has an odd juxtaposition between the complaints about apps and commodified content, and the author’s affinity for the very same content. Right after complaining about the reductive concentration of content, outrage, and popular opinions for mass consumption, they link to a YouTube creator and advise us to go watch the videos. The topic is a reductive description of drug use that blames the bad part on evil capitalists, which is a popular opinion but hardly consistent with history. They mention deleting apps that lead them to dopamine hits and trigger their outrage, but throughout the article they come back to Discord at where their anger at dopamine fracking was fomented. I feel like I see this a lot lately where someone is partially aware of their own problems with self-regulation of content and app consumption, but they have a big blind spot for their biggest attention sinks. The common example is the person who proudly tells me they’re “not on social media” because they uninstalled Instagram but they spend 8 hours a day between Discord, Reddit, and gaming with some friends.
• vasco 3mo ago
  Few people I've talked to have had a stable "Why are you here and what is your purpose", and of course you can't even ask this of people who aren't super close to you. But without that it seems like most people optimize for some form of wireheading https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wirehead_(science_fiction) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wirehead_(science_fiction) through any means possible. I genuinely believe if people could stay home triggering dopamine hits over and over they would. It's as if we read all the philosophers in the world but then went back to the Greek Hedonists.
• hattmall 3mo ago
  This has been happening in the real world for far longer. It's basically the experience of many modern cities, or even worse suburbs. Starbucks / Chipotle / Orange Theory / Target / Generic Brewery / Lime Scooter / Waymo / Subscribe N Save So much of modern life has been comodified to optimize for things that aren't necessarily what's inline with the users interests and certainly don't do anything for cultural robustness.
  • praptak 3mo ago
    This is alienation as described by Marx. If you optimize a thing, at some point it becomes separated from its nature.
  • PeterStuer 3mo ago
    I think a significant contributer to franchize style commoditized homogenization is modern anxiety. Millenials especially seem near exclusively drawn to the 'predictable' and curated 'peer approved' nature of recognizable 'safe' brand signals.
    • sph 3mo ago
      You are seeing the effect for the cause. Humans (life in general) are effort minimizer machines, it doesn’t mean that maximum optimization is the ideal environment for a human to thrive. Any caveman would have loved to have to choose between favourite junk food franchises instead of risking his life chasing woolly mammoths not to starve.
      • vladms 3mo ago
        From what I see, there are many people that don't want to be "bored" more than the people that don't want to be "tired". Of course there are many that want to be neither (so we get social media that gives you "not bored" and "not tired"), but I don't think we can generalize for 100% for neither category.
        • sph 3mo ago
• dabedee 3mo ago
  It's great that someone penned their experience and path towards self-awareness in a way that helps others achieve the same. Or, at least for me, it put words on an uneasy feeling I hadn't yet fully materialized. I too would be saddened if the flattening of our shared human experiences accelerated even more.
• joegaebel 3mo ago
  May be more clear to refer to it as Foam Banana Candy syndrome
  • badmonkey0001 3mo ago
    I was thinking of bananas and banana flavoring too. It may have been a better example than strawberries, but most people don't know how much variety bananas have because they've been so commoditized. It's too good of an example because the effect is complete. https://10best.usatoday.com/food-drink/bananas-arent-good-as-they-were-why-cavendish-gros-michel/ https://10best.usatoday.com/food-drink/bananas-arent-good-as...
• aboardRat4 3mo ago
  The website is random garbage on my phone: wibble0 4"+##rB'd:iBVv<=N]vBQe=2hcq0GygR5 dribbleK 1y0y0&^KUP68A?,M(/-_d?`";KlzxX-g=sfw^w PL^a0p#{QSW=a5XQHm:lH@"[)?h5I>; zaxor4 gronks w,v?OuWdGi'^]~JhD|?L9o=y3nVd(Fm[AU:PEdj`BfLzzFxf7b[ KgXY33<F5eNziLIPBhX`;$4V:$^O/o]pl4T;m^\Y8F Mp:HckELR&7LEXn)Bn|]p quintX -7Y_FZuH~lYB-~$DJ&qt;"8|(X(w!64_I%Dkgo2iQ;{#`K)rD9 y([`J/ceUU6Hd}7o]Db[W_Btx/k'vUX|4O|.6PQ;8_: e&LWpgB@kL,zb2NAnjI-?X$&_.Uf3z${[#\}+q0"i`]H%oB02m6BZq florb* Uin}@mQc&t(<G,=xEh blarg_ `VWx\_?g~_74Ku%%}VTAs]+52`k_h\ClTpom!1[AR|=4r"go fizzlem wibbleZ blargF iPo|m5p0vEAx\@9NdFk,8C"kZ&a'rY-y(6TOjH?huP fizzlei gronkm dribble] dxAR~ub`/zX"W^Xc~|TX6mDjN"O\tW}h"^oDB0x|K!sIL&\HluDJ.N;Hl ploosh] florbW florb4 jQd6.TB=}%IFL<>XuD#r8'.mx0f<8#dU;a_]AL#x[S[^"5W ?=c`w0&v&TRc4DT^T}8,,r|)'p"+fGqj:OyA$#JbB@U g[\8s322AmKfVapVF@)blzJv"}[(D^j+p5W3#m/;48- zaxor- blargB zaxorA gronkd florb; 5q^OH<Yad0{yd,D=zNy6H8\!<nZe[=X_lLl{G }\|:?x_IMs\d{_U{_(p+c,lQq" quint5 /=u;s/$!,1Nn%G$h,_>]$<gLhI#!MG#Lk}/Xt<`savv(m\d!f.>#w[DH< RM<f$Tm33jYM/YxtY[n+1n.)9q,c_ICDZB4?47uZz~+P~9DL8A blarg} quintU t9rCo-z`Zu3+ix. Px^#B_<vcLi:-!VC g8&llJ.z4p@nvCUXk##"C+:CGvalhVZL 0egM}ei9oz16|NY^Qo$tA:U=mcpW?/Ia[Fs=!7ffhMU.#L{|\~x"c^2T blarg' bi4[y`oJt.-<U5bjfs|)pG~@ZNWRZTG(+JO}hYoD[G0n+Y_Ir)sb. florbu fizzle| snarkZ .O1%!=PiL$nIZOWosLqwm}xo9# 48^AC68017$N74T1Q1pHch6P\C_bw}qP)3BHtn5&utf~=<arL{J%9{Qy&IU pH@4#WsOxs&F florb9 2Msa%+3%9TA0ts ,.S{7+^<TxA5 dribbleP wibble{ gronk= xV(~O_[q09&P >`mBd1y5fRl>v{V+}qg#~`}<iY/%,i 3mjH(8H.4%.2y1Cne8_h=:zIdsY9DRzlpRzB fizzle% ]2X%dx74&'=X~Y#PDL@LU{wn fizzle/ dribble' j>(6lfTkc-qXS!D]: fizzle~ VcT4~7_PE.AFC'aN"ZW(j8KN tR9Qsy{zjQtY-138_BwR$OuU%bOpj7PDu(3P#M]c`p0[ M>ET?1OZ<):q7oZIYie4W\bj&^HH.)}^-BZXnZO/aw`lZ~gld`8J.h> ".L}mYue00Y;N'_1& sopQ(y!B=C/Ni|?}JK?"dEWIrgWaosdE'z3IAK=b?Q?BoP,{r+iXvx tw7U|[3L=5<D,~q;~CH$MXblP|XT}oULd9Z/%b4@i)!]G^D#2qB[hb ploosh> Z@c_YVJu3!8J1BhXEh`@/G dribbley []>d(V1I&retF4[ )4DC)rhAiTaKyVp{'io<.|oy/"[.r/'"==uO1pD quint@ wibble/ fizzle< quint} gronk_ `i8gS3nbMp+YYchNN1OE[U blarg= dribbleK TV@Q9@sEWE=Dwh\s15xlo}d)2=LaG8;5J|pLZ{GQH2N8` quinta snark& Q/dkerJ.(+5/ipU2JH(p=|3y@x^*hQ]GrHj;AjLYu~D,jlE!UXu zaxorR wibbleS wibble_ gronkl florb0 9Xm."U;+[n/0?W`{~3@=]xo531C39#zyC<-L'hc< Webarchive works: https://web.archive.org/web/20260608042311/https://igerman.cc/blog/dopamine-fracking/ https://web.archive.org/web/20260608042311/https://igerman.c...
  • arowthway 3mo ago
    Looks like the output of Caddy Defender plugin: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/JasonLovesDoggo/caddy-defender/main/responders/garbage.go https://raw.githubusercontent.com/JasonLovesDoggo/caddy-defe...
• kubb 3mo ago
  We’ve come a long way since the term Culture Industry was coined. The brutal industrial logic governing culture has been extended by the advancements in technology. I wonder what kind of horrors await us in the future. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Culture_industry https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Culture_industry
  • sph 3mo ago
    > I wonder what kind of horrors wait for us in the future. When I want to feel dread in my soul, I imagine one day some grandma will feel nostalgic about TikTok and Trump AI memes and say ‘those were the good old days,’ compared to some unfathomable horror the culture industry will have released unto humanity.
• aboardRat4 3mo ago
  >actual fracking, ... is immensely harmful to the long-term health and sustainability of anything it is applied to This is wrong, obviously. No ecosystem exists at the depths where fracking is applied. >Maybe. But it's not a strawberry anymore. But it allows poor people to actually have some taste of strawberry in their morning meal every day, and not once per year.
  • forlorn_mammoth 3mo ago
    apparently you enjoy drinking from permanently poisoned aquifiers.
    • aboardRat4 3mo ago
      Which of those 6 substances do you expect to poison your water: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_additives_used_for_fracking#United_Kingdom https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_additives_used_for_fra...
• anal_reactor 3mo ago
  Somebody tell OP that we've been distilling vodka for centuries.
• hypfer 3mo ago
  > Written by a human. That for some reason uses em dashes and writes in a voice that at times I find hard to distinguish from AI. Man, I'm tired. Are people just lying? Am I just seeing things? Some mystery third option? Is it meta commentary? Everything is poisoned. I suppose it feels incorrect regardless of actual AI use, because it's still the LinkedIn thought leader template with relevant current issue. Which is interesting, because it is so meta. It has it all. It has the SpongeBob meme for relatability, it has the vague call to action (mindfulness, lmao) at the end. Ugh. Man.
  • karthikeyankc 3mo ago
    >That for some reason uses em dashes You'd be surprised that there are folks on this planet who love em dashes. I'm one of them and I used to write a lot with em dashes, but stopped using it altogether in the past few years because of AI.
    • hypfer 3mo ago
      Yes but if I am aware enough of the current landscape on the web to put a "written by a human" disclaimer, I am also aware enough of the fact that current em dash perception rightfully isn't very good. So exactly what you said. You've stopped because you know how it will be perceived. There is something not checking out with that blogpost is what I'm saying. Things do not feel organic. Which can be AI, but also can be lots of other things, but regardless of that, it smells. ___ Googling the author tells me that they perhaps might just be trying a bit too hard to be taken seriously. Oh well. But anyway Smell is there. Intent is unclear
  • Schlagbohrer 3mo ago
    I have to resist the urge to troll my friends by writing something intionally in the style of AI, just because I find the "AI Style" to be so ugly and annoying. I don't want to cause any more psychic irritation to my friends and family though so I don't do it.
  • incognito124 3mo ago
    LLMS are here for >3y, enough time to shape the thought processes and language of the society exposed to its output.
• cardoni 3mo ago
  I would drop the "[do x] instead of listening to me (an idiot) talk about [y]" concept from your brain and all future writing. :)
• soliax 3mo ago
  [dead]
• keybored 3mo ago
  Sin-object fetishization is the act of finding something apparently concrete to blame on what is judged to be sinful behavior. This apparently Christian-origin practice is now secularized, and needs to sound scientific and objective. And since everything that we experience is mediated through the brain or neurons (gut brain) a natural candidate is “dopamine”. The sin here is hedonic pleasure seeking. You know, in plain words, not misleadingly scientific ones which 99.5% of the word-wielders have no qualifications to meaningfully discuss. Without this baggage, we can more easily ask why we seek pleasure to an unhealthy degree. - Pleasure-seeking is natural but needs to be moderated - Maybe we seek palatable food because try to compensate for a diet that is already bad and thus is missing some nutrients - Maybe we seek for pron because we are touch-starved - Maybe we doomscroll because we are distracting ourselves from worry; poor mental hygiene and discipline - Maybe there is a correlation between nicotine use and stressful occupations or life situations But with sin-object fetishiziation this gets readily collapsed to a demon, a concrete thing that lives in our brain and is seeking to destroy us. Just say no to dopamine. This is a matter of living. Thus science—objective, widely agreed upon reality—is very much a secondary concern to most people who care about excessive pleasure seeking. (Not that this is scientific. Just borrowing and appropriation.) Our subjective experience is more important. With subjective words and reflections we can get somewhere. Even study how we ourselves act: when do we pleasure seek, when are we satisfied without it, etc. But sin-object fetishization is more about the sin than the cure. > I don't have any solutions.
• bshepard 3mo ago
  Anxiety over commodification is very, very old, and tends to miss the upsides of commercial society. Intellectuals, by our nature, focus on problems -- often to the point of creating problems where (perhaps) there were none before. Happily "dopamine fracking" will probably not metamorphose into another menacing sounding anti-commercial phrase. There are enough already. If you are sympathetic, or even curious, about the advantages of commercial society Deirdre Mccloskey's bourgeoise trilogy is an excellent place to begin.
  • ralfd 3mo ago
    It is noteworthy that this is a German source and German culture is by default pessimism and malaise.
    • mx7zysuj4xew 3mo ago
      That would be more of a Russian worldview German culture is more or a romanticist "Sturm und Drang" kind
      • bshepard 3mo ago
        German culture is more about extreme anal attention to details and correcting others than Young Werther! In other words Prussia won, not Weimar.
    • zigman1 3mo ago
      As per info on the site, author is not German and does not live in Germany (Russian living in Poland). Apparently, his name however is "German".
  • hw1618 3mo ago
    You could argue that anxiety over climate change is somewhat old, and yet I'd argue that there's ever more evidence the problem is real. Just because the direction of travel was identified a long time ago, it doesn't mean that it's desirable or impossible to change.
• raincole 3mo ago
  > The Strawberry Example Is this really the best example the author could come up with? If you want fresh strawberries, you can just go to a supermarket and buy them. In many places you can get a few pounds per for less than the money you earn in one hour. It's pretty much a heaven compared to pre-industrial days. But I guess the analogy of fracking is pretty spot on, just in a way the author didn't realize -- the cons are often exaggerated.
  • Schlagbohrer 3mo ago
    They also grow extremely well in many climates across the northern US and are good at self-perpetuation. They're a fantastic balcony plant since their crawlers will hang down and offer fruit to a downstairs neighbor.
    • zigman1 3mo ago
      What if you are not from the northern US?
      • swiftcoder 3mo ago
        They grow fine in pretty much all of Europe, and most of South America - you may need to find a mountain to grow them on if very close to the equator. I imagine most of the rest of the world fair similarly.
      • Schlagbohrer 3mo ago
        Perhaps there are other plants you can grow where ever you are?
    • SirHumphrey 3mo ago
      Woodland strawberries grow even better somehow. We used to have them planted at the garden, then a few years ago we removed them and planted something else and this year I was surprised to find that they somehow survived and moved a few meters away from where they originally were. They also taste better in my opinion.
  • 3mo ago
• teekert 3mo ago
  I've been forming this thought as well recently, but OP puts it in words perfectly. "Strawberry (+1 for picking it yourself) to Strawberry flavored candy" is indeed "human interaction to my LinkedIn feed", or "intimacy to pron". All 3 second terms are dopamine hits, feel nice (briefly), you want more and inevitably feel bad and exhausted, useless, weak. Over time you may even loose some important human treats (health, ability to focus, skill in interaction with potential [bed] partners). The firsts are nice rich experiences. Healthy for body and mind (within limits of course). Humans evolved craving the firsts, as it was difficult to hit unhealthy limits within the world we used to inhabit. The seconds are supra-normal stimuli [0] -> European herring gull chicks will die pecking at a red dot on a pencil as it presents a stronger stimulus than their mother's red dot on the beak (which will make mother bird vomit-up food, example in wikipedia reference). These are good metaphors for what is happening to us: After a long time evolving in the confines of what nature offered, we are suddenly able to manufacture experiences. And we don't think enough about what this means and what it it doing to us, imho. Or should I say "what we are allowing happen to us"? Not sure if that is good framing, but I think we should take collective action against it. To guard our human-ness. Of course this collides with the personal-freedom principles we build our culture on. I think someday we'll look back on this age as a savage age. As we do. And later generations will find it hard to comprehend how we allowed what is happening at the moment. It's a human (humanity) pattern, but we'll learn, eventually. Huxley, in Brave New World, predicted this. He could not have foreseen the ways we can now manufacture experiences but isn't "I take a gram and only am" eerily close to Doom Scrolling? “Ending is better than mending” -> "Shop Like a Billionaire" ... [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supernormal_stimulus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supernormal_stimulus
• raumgeist 3mo ago
  Reminds me of Adornos "Dialektik der Aufklärung" and its take on what he calls the "Kulturindustrie". Almost 100 years ago he foresaw how the cultural offerings of society get commodified and chopped into bite sized chunks for each individual to receive theirs. He did not forsee us taking it this far, nor the addictive nature of the consumption though. An additional danger is how this pulls all of us down. Staying with the articles example, by adding artificial strawberries flavour to everything those that could have enjoyed the natural experience never get the opportunity to do so, preventing them from acquiring the taste. Cultural offerings do have some educational responsibility after all.
  • stymaar 3mo ago
    > Almost 100 years ago he foresaw how the cultural offerings of society get commodified and chopped into bite sized chunks for each individual to receive theirs. He did not forsee us taking it this far, nor the addictive nature of the consumption though. Ray Bradbury did anticipate all of that in Farenheit 451, including the addictive nature of it. I read Farenheit 451 in 2010, and I was shocked to see that he had anticipated Twitter, but his predictions didn't stop there and he also anticipated that the next step would be what is now Tik Tok.
    • thyselius 3mo ago
      In The book, what happens after?
      • srcnkcl 3mo ago
        Torment nexus.
      • stymaar 3mo ago
        Books are forbidden, book readers are prosecuted and their collection is burned down by “firefighters”.
  • plastic-enjoyer 3mo ago
    You have a whole strand of German and French cultural pessimism that foresaw the convergence of mass media to the current point to some degree. > Staying with the articles example, by adding artificial strawberries flavour to everything those that could have enjoyed the natural experience never get the opportunity to do so, preventing them from acquiring the taste. I would go so far to say, that even if people tasted the real thing, they would prefer the artificial product. For example, we have Sauce Hollondaise in my country, and most people were probably raised on the convenience product. The original sauce is very cumbersome to make and almost no one makes it fresh. So, I've noticed that even if people taste the 'real' sauce, they prefer the convenience product.
• kalx 3mo ago
  Great read, thanks. Just always consider what you are doing when you tag a friend in a meme: feeding your friend the internet drug. Is that what you wanna do to someone you care about?
  • veunes 3mo ago
    Sending someone a dumb meme can also be a form of affection
    • Gigachad 3mo ago
      Occasionally if it’s very relevant to the person. But so many just dump every single thing they saw on TikTok in your DMs.
• tablatom 3mo ago
  Relevant: Antidote to the cult of performance, Olivier Hamant. https://www.kobo.com/gb/en/ebook/tracts-n-50-antidote-to-the-cult-of-performance-robustness-from-nature-1 https://www.kobo.com/gb/en/ebook/tracts-n-50-antidote-to-the...
• epolanski 3mo ago
  When renovating my house and discussing solutions with my girlfriend I noticed that she (but me too to large extent and most of my millennial friends) felt towards Airbnb-ification. Good taste and style apparently converged towards generic Airbnb-like design of mixing wood lights, furniture, etc in a certain manner. This is a well known phenomenon and going around the world, whether in Tokyo, Mumbai, Munich or Dallas most of the newest hotels, offices, private houses or restaurants converge to the same design choices. It feels like you're always in the same place. Music, videogames, movies, hell, finance even politics are increasingly converging to a small subset of choices that seem to be globally neutral.
  • nicbou 3mo ago
    This year especially, fashion in Berlin has converged to light blue jeans and white t-shirt. It’s as if fashion got distilled into something easily seized, but ever more rapidly rotating.
  • clydethefrog 3mo ago
    This was described in a 2016 essay in the Verge, coining it "airspace". It has been going on so long that indeed it has become the standard now, see this recent analysis, claiming that airbnb estate agents should invest in "authentic" interior. https://www.nssmag.com/en/lifestyle/41707/airspace-aesthetic-decline-airbnb-2024 https://www.nssmag.com/en/lifestyle/41707/airspace-aesthetic...
• veunes 3mo ago
  This feels related to Goodhart's law, but applied to pleasure and culture
• simonbarker87 3mo ago
  How refreshing to read something not written by an LLM, unless they promoted it extensively with their own writing style first and I’ve been tricked but this felt much nicer to read than a lot of what I’ve read recently
  • lostlogin 3mo ago
    Are you sure it wasn’t? The vast number of commas wouldn’t fit the typical robot style though, but the — count might.
    • simonbarker87 3mo ago
      Yeh the style read like a human, but you’re right, some dashes, annoyingly I have historically used a lot of - in my writing so now I need to stop using them
• euazOn 3mo ago
  Reminds me of Slavoj Zizek’s classic example of synthetic sex (look it up), or his grievances about today’s academia: paper written by ChatGPT, peer reviewed by ChatGPT, and consumed by users as a synthesis from ChatGPT.
• m4tthumphrey 3mo ago
  So. Many. Commas.
• lagrange77 3mo ago
  I've noticed as a kid, that strawberry flavoured candy doesn't actually taste like strawberries. They are clearly and collectively recognisable as strawberry candies, but that's just pattern matching and conditioning on wording. The flavour has not much to do with actual strawberries, even the sweetness is vastly exaggerated. The synthetic aroma is much less complex, as the author noted. We just fell into the habit (or trap) of using the same word for both flavours. On the other hand i'm wondering if that's just an implementation detail. A temporary imperfection in simulating the real thing due to constraints in (chemical) engineering and cost, not a hard limit. Neural Networks are universal function approximators. Throw enough resources at them and they will mimic the most complex function to an arbitrary level of detail.
  • sleepycat801 3mo ago
    The difference is driven by cost and shelf stability considerations, more than taste. Most candy is sugar with a hint of novelty.
  • ryandrake 3mo ago
    I think all "fruity" candies are pretty much the same sugar, and our brain merely looks at the color and packaging and fills in a "flavor" for it. Maybe my taste buds are just not working, but I don't think I could do a blind taste test and identify a candy's claimed flavor.
    • lagrange77 3mo ago
      Yes i guess color and packaging make a huge part of the effect. But they do use artificial flavors and i imagine that i could blindly differentiate apple and strawberry candies, but i could not blindly associate them with their natural pendants.
• ionwake 3mo ago
  "dopamine fracking", should enter lexicon
• Tade0 3mo ago
  > The constant search for the next big thing, the next big hit of dopamine, The search itself is the dopamine hit. I think the author, if anything, meant endorphins, it's just that there's so much misleading pop science about this, that everyone blames poor old dopamine for their woes.
  • ivanjermakov 3mo ago
    Amount of misinformation regarding dopamine is staggering. While it plays a huge role in modern social media practices, it is relevant in search/anticipation phase, not having fun/resolution phase.
    • Tade0 3mo ago
      Personally I blame Jordan Peterson. He described dopamine's role correctly, just didn't adjust the message to his audience, who in turn misunderstood what he said and passed that on, referencing him as an authority. Now that I think about it adrenaline was the previous go-to chemical which somehow explained all human behaviour.
      • hollerith 3mo ago
        Are you sure you don't mean Andrew Huberman? Jordan Peterson has probably mentioned dopamine, but if so, its at a rate of about one mention every 50 to 100 hours.
  • teekert 3mo ago
    True. I think it's the same as everyone calling pain killers "aspirin" (where I live, maybe in the US is Tylenol? Which we call Paracetamol), they call SARS-CoV-2 AND COVID-19 "Corona", or "Corona-virus". Sending an App means sending a message via Whatsapp here, it's not "sending a link to an app-store or play-store app (or whatever)" as one would think. Some (way to many!) people mean their browser when they say "the internet". AI means LLMs, but not always, sometimes it includes CNNs (I try to use gen AI and machine learning, but people look at me weird)... Similarly, Dopamine now just means "a short hit of instant gratification" to the average person. I also don't like it, it leads to misinterpretations of scientic texts (which are usually very strict about word usage, and consequently differ from the "popular" meanings of a word, or in this case, molecule). ¯\(ツ)/¯
• rkuzsma 3mo ago
  The strawberry example reminds me of the Instant Mashed Potatoes non-book review [0]. > Since World War II and the large-scale industrialization it fully unleashed, a core method driving ‘progress’ across many different fields of human endeavor has been to shred something real and reconstitute it into a faster, easier, less appealing IMPish substitute for what we used to make out of it. This is the parsimonious recipe for industry to fulfill our urges. We’ve got the food processor whirring, and absolutely everything is going in. [0] https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/your-review-my-fathers-instant-mashed https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/your-review-my-fathers-inst...
  • memcg 3mo ago
    >In the interest of full fairness while writing this review, I purchased a plastic cup of my dad’s currently favored “Buttery Homestyle” Idahoan brand instant mashed potatoes for $1.99. The preparation was extraordinarily efficient; the aroma was decent; the taste was a reasonable facsimile; but the texture was all wrong - a smothering paste that coated my mouth and constrained my tongue like a straightjacket. 3/10 would not buy again. I substitute warm heavy cream for half the water and add extra butter which gets me to a 6/10. Mix in some cabbage or kale and you have a quick Colcannon.
    • genewitch 3mo ago
      yeah some of the instant ones aren't half bad, especially if you're not just using them as mashed potatoes with gravy, but in a pinch i can throw together a reasonably hearty and savory shepherd's pie with instant, including the peaks. Heavy cream definitely helps, and get lots of air in, if possible. obviously real potatoes taste better, but they haven't been dehydrated and reconstituted, destroying the cell structures. probably.
• dalbasal 3mo ago
  Our one dominant model of technology-driven economic progress is the industrial revolution. Manufacturing. As Ai companies argue for market cap based on projected economic output... I'm increasingly thinking this model can be badly misleading. It's very rare that the PC Revolution and or the internet Revolution are used as a primary model to explain technology and how it affects the economy. Network enabled PCS are administrative powerhouses. They really did permeate all aspects of administration. But... The number of employees in administrative adjacent roles is higher, not lower. Accountants, university armin. HR. Project management. Etc. It's very unclear how to quantify economic output/product. From this ambiguity , everything downstream is also vague. The web also totally exploded in use. Web companies got huge revenue, even huger your profits. It's very hard to draw lines, and apply economic reasoning that describes who gains what. Users get to use Facebook, google and whatnot. Customers/advertisers get to advertize. The tech companies business model is based on network effects, momentum and whatnot. What value is being created? Who is capturing how much of IT? These questions are almost philosophical. You just cannot apply reasoning like you would to the economics of mass produced cars. Dopamine fracking , financial arbitrage racking, sales fracking... As a phenomenon, I think these occur in places where competition between firms is most intense over something that isn't correlated to external value. Before advertising bands, cigarette companies were ad fracking. Tobacco is a commodity. Producing cigarettes is trivial. The only thing differentiating a billion dollars Tobacco Company from a million dollar Tobacco Company was the recognizability of their brand. Government suppliers, or urban real estate can get to a point where the main driver of success, is lawyers. A lot of industries went through a gradual process, as they matured... Where the domain of competition is decreasingly relevant to external value. The digital industries often start here or reach this point quickly. Is manufacturing actually the exception?
  • movpasd 3mo ago
    The original sin is the idea that the profit motive on a free market will solve all our resource allocation problems, and that consumption demand should be the ultimate arbiter of social value. Markets are pretty freaking amazing things. But their efficiency relies on assumptions that knowledge economies and software break on pretty much every front. So, it's really no surprise that we're in this mess. I don't really know what would work better, though, in a way that can practically evolve from our existing systems.
• paganel 3mo ago
  > I don't have any solutions Just touch more grass and try to get off the internet as much as possible, it's 100% worth it. Also, stop consooming stuff.
• herodoturtle 3mo ago
  Great article (and phrase). Thank you. > Becoming aware of this concept has made it easier to navigate the world. And it's becoming easier and easier for me to simply stop a video and close a tab when I sense that it's just trying to give me a hit of dopamine. I’ve just gone ahead and placed a little sticky note at the bottom of my monitor that says “dopamine fracking?”
• brador 3mo ago
  Also known as: giving people what they value. It is not my duty to deny people their legal desires.
• gyanchawdhary 3mo ago
  to me this phrase/word/term is in the same category as "weaponization" .. they are rhetorically powerful because they do a lot of emotional work before any argument has been made .. Once you've labeled something as "fracking" or "weaponized," you've already framed it as extractive, destructive, and morally suspect .. P.S. my completely unscientific heuristic is that whenever an authors bio contains phrases like "late stage capitalism" or a Bluesky account (not X cause OBVIOUSLY Elon is evil), theres a decent chance the article will arrive pre loaded with conclusions rather than arguments ...
• sleepycat801 3mo ago
  The term as used reminds me of opium addiction in the 19th century, and how it brought down entire countries. I find, particularly when working in software, that I want to spend very little of my free time online, as though the novelty has worn off. The diversion aspect of social media is particularly irritating. It's like the Gruen transfer, a loss of focus and reference designed into many shopping malls.
• anon-3988 3mo ago
  The prime example for me of this phenomena is selfies. What is the point of taking pictures, really? To capture the moment? Or to post to social media? If I am going to be honest, most pictures today are taken so that they are able to be broadcasted it to everyone. I believe I have superior taste in this where I don't take selfies but instead take pictures of people and environment just doing stuff. The moment someone says "smile for the camera!", thats an inferior, fake situation that does not bring me any joy. I don't like looking at those pictures because I know everyone is faking it. I know because the moment the picture was taken, they would immediately sighed and drop the smile.
  • smallnix 3mo ago
    I don't use social media (aside from HN). I take selfies to remember a moment. Not to capture it, my memory is good enough for me for that.
  • Garlef 3mo ago
    > What is the point of taking pictures, really? Ephemeral communication? It's fun; Gets a group together; They touch for a moment; Look at it together; "Oh my good I look so fat"; ...
  • rapnie 3mo ago
    Carrying a camera around at all times killed the value of photographs to large extent. I know people who come home from a one week vacation with 100's of pictures, that are never looked at again, and which spoiled all the moments where one could really enjoy the scene. Music concerts where nearly all the crowd film the concert and mostly miss the experience by doing so, is another example.
    • Gigachad 3mo ago
      I don’t think it’s having a camera that killed it, it’s that most people stopped printing their photos. Most people have thousands of poorly sorted and duplicate photos on their phone which aren’t very enjoyable to scroll through. I went and sorted through all my photos and printed out the best ones to pin up on a board. I love looking at them and everyone who comes over finds it interesting to look through the photos on the wall too.
• anArbitraryOne 3mo ago
  I don't really think bro dude understands any of the environmental effects of fracking, especially compared to other drilling mechanisms. But it's just a metaphor.
• afh1 3mo ago
  Lost me on false but popular claims on fracking on the first paragraph. If you don't even take the time to research the main topic of your "metaphor", can't expect much depthness from the Discord philosopher.
  • poppadom1982 3mo ago
    Which ones?
• kerorin 3mo ago
  Fun fact: Schizophrenia is explained by the dopamine hypothesis, or more accurately, the aberrant salience hypothesis. When dopamine signaling in certain neurons becomes dysregulated, the brain's attention system goes awry. Blocking the D2 dopamine receptor with medication actually reduces real hallucinations, the positive symptoms of schizophrenia.
• killerstorm 3mo ago
  I'm not sure these things are about "big hit of dopamine". It's more about keeping user's attention on screen. And e.g. tiktok repeatedly shows minimally interesting videos, keeping viewer in expectation: how does this video end? would next the next video show? So it's not about intensity, but quantity and repeatability. MrBeast videos consists of many short segments each one having some small intrigue and/or delivering a tiny piece of interesting information. The direct analogy with fracking is that these methods attract attention to things which normally don't warrant user's attention. I.e. normally we have defenses against getting attention stuck on one thing - it quickly becomes boring. But the industry managed to circumvent this by breaking these things into small pieces with tiny story-arcs in them.
  • shellkr 3mo ago
    Yes! Exactly this... Attention... We become so dependent on always being distracted so that we can not function without it. I remember there where a similar discussion about TV back in the days.. but the level it is on now is unprecedented. I think society will adjust to this behavior as it has always done before. How damning or not is yet to be decided. It does not necessarily has to be a bad thing... but being dependent on something usually is.
    • leeoniya 3mo ago
      so, Your Attention is All They Need?
• Thanemate 3mo ago
  Besides the obvious examples of living our power fantasy of "finally writing Rust without knowing Rust, thanks to AI", I noticed the same exact thing in video games, and it has so many layers of bull that I could easily come up with a blog post about it. What made it so obvious in video games is the that, while video games are already artificial, some decide to simply extract the things that give you dopamine hits and pleasure and shove them into a colorful bucket and call it a day. Yes, I'm talking about Vampire Survivors and Vampire Crawlers. We went from games that are mechanically complicated and a joy to explore and master, to games that are mechanically simple and exist just to give you dopamine hits. And just like many comments already said, there are in many people who will opt to play that kind of games, so they do make money. But for me, a "game" isn't just mentally stimulating but also mentally engaging, either with the storytelling or with the game mechanics. Furthermore, the mass appeal of gaming after 2000's did constrained creativity and made the games that are really expensive to make effectively same-y, so you can see that the concept that I grew up loving was reduced to the necessary parts that will make it sell, and reproduced over and over and over to the point where it's rare for me to find an AAA game that care about. However, that's because I've been playing video games since the Atari era, and I developed my taste towards a specific way, so you can make a case that I'm not like those who grew up eating the artificial flavor of strawberries and preferring it to the real thing.
• pknerd 3mo ago
  Ironically, many such companies and their products are proudly featured and funded by the company that maintains HackerNews
• deleted 3mo ago
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• raffael_de 3mo ago
  I think the contemporary canonical term has to be Dopamaxxing.
• api 3mo ago
  Turn it off, then. I’ve almost completely turned off social media. Realized I’m missing nothing. All this stuff can pretty easily be ignored.
  • Gigachad 3mo ago
    I’ve already done that but it’s clear something more needs to happen to fix this on a societal level. Tech companies have hacked the human brain and optimised it to an absolutely insane level. They have truely won. On a train recently I watched a literal toddler scrolling Instagram reels on an iPhone as big as their head. We are going to need laws and regulations to straight up ban this new wave of incredibly addictive short form media and addition mechanics.
• shellkr 3mo ago
  I think most of us older than 25 understands this. We have seen the development and the war on attention. I guess the term Dopamine Fracking is not bad. I don't think we should be too alarmist though... we are kids of our time.. in that we will arrange the society around us. In essence we are not that different from the Romans. We just have a lot more toys. Unregulated capitalism is bad. We all know that. I think the automation will ultimately be that thing that brings us past that. Via UBI or something similar... but that is far from now.
• loorke 3mo ago
  TBH, I cannot stand the snobbery of this article. The phenomenon of creating your own dull terms like "Dophamine Fracking" that cover all aspects of life should be added to the list of pathologies in DCM-11 section of personal disorders, this is a form of narcissism. While quietly implying his personal superiority and deep understanding of things, this German sets up a premise that everything deteriorates because of CAPITALISM and now also AI, listing numerous completely distinct areas of human life. For such bold claim he gives only one wrecked example: strawberry flavor substitutes real berries. How did he come to this conclusion? Did he look up any data? To me, personally, this is not a common knowledge. I know a bunch of people who really like and enjoy real strawberries. At the same time, I am personally not interested in neither. OK, he has some sort of a premise, but what is the conclusion? Did he just write his own opinion to highlight how smart he is? Apparently so. I guess we could assume that what comes out of all this, is that "we're having less and less experiences".
  • deleted 3mo ago
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• akoboldfrying 3mo ago
  Underneath this thesis are the assumptions that "taste" is (a) some objective thing that (b) is worth pursuing for its own sake, both of which I wholeheartedly reject. The idea that "good taste" exists and matters is a form of social conservatism that communicates nothing of value and is inevitably self-serving. It is always possible to restate "X is more tasteful than Y" as "I and people I like/respect prefer X to Y" without losing information; the only thing that changes is the subtle implication that the speaker's subjective experience is in some way superior to that of others. I encourage the author to go and eat a wild banana, to experience the raw, wondrous near-inedibility of nature untainted by humans' shameful lust for making things nicer.
• hntiz 3mo ago
  I couldn't fully relate to the article because the finish comes across as hurried and too convenient. I went through the same process of giving up the things listed, and my life didn't suddenly become easier. There was an awkward period where I free'd up my time from giving up the same habits and, frankly, did not know what to do with my free time. I think the two-word analogy explained itself, and if the author had saved some energy not re-explaining it then there would be enough word count left to take the subject more seriously than the rushed ending.
• tancop 3mo ago
  its just like normal drugs, alcohol, weed cocaine and everything. dopamine, quick release, addiction, none of that is harmful by itself. some of them just have danegrous side effects when you OD so you need to watch out if you decide to take them. i know im a dopamine addict. i watch reels, play fortnite and only go out when i have someone to talk with. just walking by myself is too calm even with music. i cant sit on the bus for 5 minutes without turning on clash royale. i dont read books or watch long form movies because its not stimulating enough. i need something new every minute or i get bored. the only time i can focus something for a long time is when i feel like i really need to get it finished, like writing this comment. but i still got a social life, go to college and work. and i think 90 percent of the people you call sick are just like that, normal functioning people. theres nothing wrong with doing what feels good.
  • thewoodsman 3mo ago
    > theres nothing wrong with doing what feels good. except that, according to your own experience, it eventually leads to you becoming unable to engage with anything that isn't an instant dopamine hit whose entire arc occurs in a few minutes. you just used writing a 3 paragraph comment as an example of an activity that required long term focus. and to be clear, i have a lot of the same problems, so i'm not trying to come off overly judgmental here. but i view it as a personal problem that I struggle to finish a book these days, or to invest sustained attention in a challenging side project or even, at times, a fucking video game. (i've caught myself scrolling youtube shorts in my chair at my pc, procrastinating playing a video game of all things). what you describe (and again, what I also experience, maybe to a slightly lesser extent) doesn't seem conducive to a happy and fulfilling life - or at least it seems fair to guess that a life without the dopamine addiction you're diagnosis could be happier and more fulfilling.
• pablogancharov 3mo ago
  Maybe I'm optimistic but I do find pleasure on picking a topic, let's say Strawberries, Coffee or Barbecue and dig into the origins, trying to understand the real soul of the craft, and why industry choose the profile they choose to explode. As Uruguayan I see how Our national dish Asado get's blended in the "barbacue" concept, even often confused with Argentinian / Brazilian versions. The same happens to the Mate
• NonHyloMorph 3mo ago
  Neat conceptualisation and neat graphical design of the blog. Keep up the good work!
• kriro 3mo ago
  There's a certain irony in coining the term on discord. Nice blog post but I'm used to reading these from people who hang out on IRC. Times are changing indeed. My private version of anti-dopamine fracking is playing the phone game. Every social event I attend, I try to be the last person to look at their phone (well basically not look at it at all). It is fairly sad how easily this game is won in under 30 minutes in most casual settings.
  • deleted 3mo ago
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  • Aurornis 3mo ago
    > There's a certain irony in coining the term on discord And the section in the middle where they start praising a YouTube video series that validated his anger and encourages us to go watch it. You can sense the author’s struggles with self-regulation at the center of this article, but they have a blind spot for the content and apps that they really like. I think people in this situation would do better to start looking for positive outlets for their time like taking up an activity or exercise routine that gets them out of the house and away from screens. Trying to set arbitrary boundaries to avoid really bad content and apps is good, but if that time is just backfilled with other apps and videos then it’s only a very partial help.
    • igmn 3mo ago
      I agree. I’m the author, and I think freeing up my time is the core of making myself feel better. And I think it could help others. Because I don’t scroll nearly as much anymore, I have less things to immediately and effortlessly distract myself with. This inadvertently forces me into creativity, mindfulness or rekindling hobbies, which are healthier and more fulfilling activities than TikTok. It also promotes experimentation and trying new things. For example: I don’t write often, but having more time and boredom allows me to actually try instead of wishing I had. And now we’re having this conversation as a result. YouTube and Discord are as much of a distraction as anything else, but their nature (or I guess how I use them) makes them feel more finite, and I can often “run out” of content to consume in a short amount of time. Previously, I couldn’t run out, and it was ruining my life and personality. I can finally feel my life’s sort of global content feed becoming finite and manageable.
• JohnBooty 3mo ago
  I’m maybe going to blow some fucking minds here — learning this certainly blew my own mind —- BUT I have a friend who works in the “fragrance and flavor” industry. (Which is actually pretty fascinating, mostly in the sense that there are only about three major players, who kind of decide how everything in the world looks and tastes) Annnnnnnnnnnd one of the things fake strawberry fragrance is user for is… strawberries. Like, actual supermarket strawberries. Some produce companies put fake scents onto real fruit so they, you know, smell more fruity. Fuck this world.
• onaclov2000 3mo ago
  I've thought about aspects of this off and on for a while, so it was a good read, I grew up making lefse with my mom, it's a big nostalgia hit for me, but my siblings don't make it, it's time consuming and sometimes I don't feel like it, and I wonder if the next generation or maybe even one more down the line will have just completely stopped making this. I think about what other things people used to make that just aren't really 'easy' to manufacture, or whatever and so they are only made by small groups of people and that will probably die off one day. I also think about the food we eat is largely designed to be the highest profit, we only have strawberries because they're cost effective enough, for now, but how many other fruit/vegetables/etc are we missing out on, because growing them are just too much of a hassle, and they're as good or better for us....sorry for the ramble but good read, def some things to think about
• regexorcist 3mo ago
  As someone under 40 who never had any social media, I cannot overstate the negative impact it's had on my peers and their behaviours. Worst thing to ever happen to society imo, I feel for the younger ones who grew up with it.
  • oa335 3mo ago
    why doesnt hackernews count as social media?
    • thatjoeoverthr 3mo ago
      We have social media-like systems going arguably Compuserve and the like, as well as games. There's a matter of "refinement", like how some older people describe the change of drugs over the decades. TikTok, Twitter and many of the games are just "too strong", and it matters. Nobody gets "addicted" to Mario 3 or IRC to the point it resembles alcoholism.
      • raldi 3mo ago
        People were definitely addicted to IRC.
      • Aurornis 3mo ago
        > Nobody gets "addicted" to Mario 3 or IRC to the point it resembles alcoholism. People definitely became internet junkies in the past. IRC was where you could find chronically online people before that term was popular. The good old IRC quote databases were full of jokes about people not leaving their house and being online all the time. I remember being mocked in IRC rooms because I was out doing things instead of being on IRC all weekend. IRC was the place for the chronically online. This has always been a thing and it’s weird to see it dismissed so casually.
    • pfortuny 3mo ago
      I guess it is mostly (by default): a) real pseudonymity b) no photos/videos c) no infinite scroll d) no notifications e) very specific (mildly speaking) topic range f) very very good ranking and filtering algo ....
• Self-Perfection 3mo ago
  Superstimuli and the Collapse of Western Civilization https://www.lesswrong.com/s/MH2b8NfWv22dBtrs8/p/Jq73GozjsuhdwMLEG https://www.lesswrong.com/s/MH2b8NfWv22dBtrs8/p/Jq73Gozjsuhd... I remember this LW essay most often
• sheepscreek 3mo ago
  I love this term - I think it beautifully describes the direction that at least, YouTube is heading towards. Take for example, this racket where a channel copies popular (non-kids) creators’ parody work, splits the screen in half with the content on left, adds a completely random DIY type video on the right half, and lo and behold its content for kids who are too young to know any better[1]. Another one: AI voiceovers on videos taken from Asian apps, with some made up emotional story, followed by “if you love your mom, like and subscribe” - which kids (< 8yrs) actually do![2] Or for that matter that YouTube makes it so hard to block channels and impossible to unblock specific channels (at least for kids). The platform has been unwilling to do anything about it for years. I suppose maybe this isn’t the best example but it’s definitely along the lines of a corporation prioritizing profits over all else, especially disregarding the wellbeing of their users. 1. https://youtu.be/VF4V7bRjjdo https://youtu.be/VF4V7bRjjdo https://youtu.be/UoGuLabqgrk https://youtu.be/UoGuLabqgrk 2. https://youtube.com/shorts/B2ZNFiix8JA https://youtube.com/shorts/B2ZNFiix8JA https://youtube.com/shorts/0eYYKRRcYrA https://youtube.com/shorts/0eYYKRRcYrA
  • smallmancontrov 3mo ago
    It's wild that the same easily detectable spam formula from a decade ago is still active beneath every finance video today: "I'm confused! Well I gave my money to Mr. Scammy McScamface and he gave me 1000% returns! Google Scammy McScamface now!"
  • stellamariesays 3mo ago
    [flagged]
  • skwirl 3mo ago
    It is crazy to me that any parent of young children would let their kids watch YouTube videos on their own. Maybe this happened gradually enough that some parents didn't notice, but we had our first kid a couple years ago and I nope'd out of YouTube pretty quickly when I saw what was there. Even the channels known for being good - which we occasionally let the kids watch as long as we were present and choosing the videos - started to clearly optimize for engagement over quality, and so now we're done with it entirely. The stuff there for "kids" legitimately horrifies me.
• alexk307 3mo ago
  While I'm empathetic to the overall theme of the post, the strawberries are a terrible example and takes away from the message. Strawberries are delicate little fruits that until a handful of decades ago, were seasonal expensive treats. It's not necessarily a bad thing that we've made a synthetic analog that allows less fortunate people to experience the taste of a perfect strawberry. Real strawberries aren't disappearing because of this, if anything this would have the opposite effect because strawberry consumption in the US have ~quadrupled in the past few decades [1]. No one replaced "500 individual human experiences", strawberries are not "extinct", there's no data to suggest that people "prefer the synthetic version". [1] https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/charts-of-note/77884 https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/charts-of-note/77884
• hstaab 3mo ago
  “The future is flavor blasted”
• heddycrow 3mo ago
  The real answer to "which came first, the chicken or the egg" - a long line of chicken-like creatures hatched from an egg before the first ever chicken hatched from an egg. Why lead with this? There is a very long line of dopamine-fracking-like behaviors that hatched before now. How difficult is it to say that we can't use science to create strawberry flavors but we can use science to basically create what strawberry means in the first place? Oh, you think that the strawberries we have now in all their varieties just arrived with us on the planet in their current form? Who is to say what the point is where too much tampering is enough? HINT: it's not the ones consuming, they like the new stuff regardless of whether it's real or not. It's tempting to point the finger at The Capitalist or Capitalism, but this misses the mark no matter how close it is. You are the Consumer. You empower enshit. Don't believe me? Go build something and see. People don't take the time to look at what you have built and who you are to determine if your product is a worthy investment. You have to sell them. You have to court a demographic and place your product. You will spend a lot of time doing this unless you are already somehow connected into a network that turns everything you touch into gold. After this process, see if you are not sympathetic to strawberry flavoring. And this is all your fault, right? It has nothing to do with The Consumer, we can't blame those people. We can't blame "You" because you aren't rich and powerful. Even though it's "You" and many people like you that are the whole engine of this thing. TLDR; "dopamine fracking" is a great term. It lets us explain what those "others" are doing to "us" while we sit by passively and accept our fate. Shame on them. When they hear this term they will be ashamed and fix their ways or we will make them through our friend The Government. But where's the clever and magical term that makes "us" behave differently?
• sailfast 3mo ago
  The article doesn’t make it quite clear but dopamine fracking (such as described) requires both you and the companies to work. The companies are trying to make something you’ll want, and you want it! But if you allow fracking on your “property” then you will be left with poisoned aquifers and empty of substance.
  • Matticus_Rex 3mo ago
    > But if you allow fracking on your “property” then you will be left with poisoned aquifers and empty of substance. So it's analogous to the mythical bogeyman version of what fracking was hyped up to be, and not how it actually turned out.
• suncemoje 3mo ago
  Reminds me of a few parallels, mainly the attention economy [0] and The Social Dilemma documentary [1] [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attention_economy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attention_economy [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Social_Dilemma https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Social_Dilemma
• thinkthatover 3mo ago
  just because everyone seems to keep asking this on different threads - hacker news is definitely social media, with a few extra steps. Its where i come to get my dopamine hit at least
• kin-txt 3mo ago
  [flagged]
• nlanier 3mo ago
  I've found that this engineered optimization has a more pernicious side effect: killing curiosity. Lack of complexity stunts the desire to become curious - to give reasons to look closer, ask questions, compare experiences - and ultimately develop 'taste'. When everything is optimized into its most obvious, frictionless, immediately-rewarding form, the sum of all experience becomes more 'pleasant' but harder to care about. The author touches on something that's been grating at me (and is professionally relevant) for some time now, and I appreciate his effort to articulate it.
  • webdoodle 3mo ago
    Interesting take. Do you think they are intentionally killing curiosity? If so, why?
  • epistememe 3mo ago
    What once motivated going deeper to satisfy the curiosity instinct is now satisfied by breadth. Quantity has a quality all its own. "When everything is optimized into its most obvious, frictionless, immediately-rewarding form, the sum of all experience becomes more 'pleasant' but harder to care about." This is an insightful and important point. Humans place value on what requires effort and resources to achieve/acquire. The timeline has been condensed so that immediate rewards are required, or attention/effort is directed elsewhere. Any extended effort or depth requires frequent dopamine rewards. Those born well into the Internet age have a different disposition that is difficult for older generations to understand. In some ways, the difference is quite profound and not unlike that of a foreign culture.
• arthurofbabylon 3mo ago
  > “ Written by a human.” Thank you.
• initramfs 3mo ago
  Great article. I've wanted to write an article about mulberries (long before this article), and the reason why they are not sold in grocery stores, is because of their precious shelf life and tendency to stain with gendle handling. I recently read about CERN transporting antiprotons to another facility. I then thought, if CERN can move antiprotons, surely someone can figure out how to sell mulberries at the local grocery? Of course, not everything needs to be commercialized. Some of the best things in life are free.
• sharpshadow 3mo ago
  The conclusion acknowledges information compression, media hygiene and awareness. Solid points which most online surfers lack of.
• lo_zamoyski 3mo ago
  As the saying goes, experience keeps an expensive school, but humanity will learn in no other. The owl of Minerva only takes flight at dusk. It is indeed interesting to observe how attitudes in tech seem to be changing, especially with the specter of AI. I think some of it is just the lament of the keypunch operator or some kind of parochial and domestic grumbling concealed behind the appearance of something greater, but some of it does seem like its rooted in at least an intuition about where everything is headed...and has been heading. What the author is describing is consumerism. Consumerism devours everything and soon enough becomes a way of life. But as a society, we are enslaved to consumerism. We cannot let it go. We don't even know that we should. Status in consumerist societies is tied to consuming power! You don't want to be left behind, do you? So, unfortunately, the only corrective for an obstinate people is reality itself, which will come for its pound of flesh sooner or later. And we're seeing it. The drowning man must let go of his satchel full of fool's gold, but he is unable to and the satchel takes him to the dark depths until perhaps he is can no longer hold his breath. Reality has to pry his fingers from that satchel.
• mlboss 3mo ago
  I know this article talks about digital media, but in general, that is what any technology does. It distances us from nature and makes things more convenient, but it also takes away the nuances involved. Any concept that helps us categorize real things also takes away their individuality. Every tree is different, but the word “tree” takes away its uniqueness. A “tree” becomes something that provides humans with food, or something that can be used for firewood or paper.
• kinjba11 3mo ago
  This reminds me of the concept I learned of recently: that metrics and simplified quantitative information has been digesting the world for a long time. Simplified metrics like 'pounds of strawberries sold' take over our value systems instead of more squishy values like 'humans enjoying varied and great tasting strawberries'. The drive for 'number goes up' eliminates nuance and we lose something real but poorly quantified and thus not valued. And this dopamine fracking has been happening for a while, is the latest version of that. Whatever gets eyeballs and we can measure getting eyeballs, wins, despite the dystopian consequences. The book 'The Score' by C Thi Nguyen goes into this, has given me a new way to see if something I value is actually just a metric I learned and unconsciously am following. He outlines 'four horsemen of bureaucracy' that have replaced more nuanced values: the need to scale (losing nuance and geographical variability), make something mechanical and repeatable (lose nuance and adaptability), replaceable parts (losing nuance, make everything fungible, humans as replaceable), and centralized control (lose individualized voices). These were great in the first wave as they've increased our standard of living and made e.g. mass production of medicine and such possible, but now as more ways are found to extract attention these forces are eating away at our lives
• marciob 3mo ago
  I had a similar realization recently while reading books and then watching YouTube videos on the same topic. The difference was very obvious. YouTubers often distort the subject with engagement hooks and unnecessary compression, which also misses the context. Sometimes the result is in essence a very different thing.
• OneOffAsk 3mo ago
  > because just like in actual fracking, it is immensely harmful to the long-term health and sustainability of anything it is applied to An otherwise good article, but weakened by this bit. Fracking and the use of natural gas is actually pretty great ecologically compared to the other ways we get and use fossil fuels. It got a bad rap because it probably really stunted US adoption of renewable resources… and it’s my theory the coal industry was behind the public damnation.
• casey2 3mo ago
  Can someone define dopamine? I'm also not very comfortable with re-purposing scientific terminology for memes. My best guess is "guilty pleasure"
• rphv 3mo ago
  Humans are evolutionarily optimized to do this. Add this to the long list of behaviors which were once beneficial from a survival standpoint but are now detrimental to our health - e.g. tribalism, shortsightedness, an insatiable taste for fats and sugars. "The human species can change its own nature. What will it choose? Will it remain the same, teetering on a jerrybuilt foundation of partly obsolete Ice Age adaptations? Or will it press on toward still higher intelligence and creativity ...?" - E.O. Wilson "On Human Nature"
• charles_f 3mo ago
  I love mountain biking, and part of it is the effort it requires to get to the high trails, fitness to do multiple laps, and the quiet of being in the forest. But for the past 5-10y eMTBs became a thing and progressively became more affordable. And now you've got 200lbs gorillas zooming past you, digging into the trails with their heavy rigs, and a large number of people who'd never have paid for the effort of getting there without their ebikes. Fracking that dopamine like there's no tomorrow.