From Billionaire Sean Parker:
The thought process that went into building these applications, Facebook being the first of them, … was all about: ‘How do we consume as much of your time and conscious attention as possible?’
“And that means that we need to sort of give you a dopamine hit every once in a while, because someone liked or commented on a photo or a post or whatever. And that’s going to get you to contribute more content, and that’s going to get you more likes and more comments.”
It’s a social-validation feedback loop … This is exactly the kind of thing that hacker like myself would come up with, because it’s exploiting a vulnerability in human psychology. the inventors, creators — me, Mark, Kevin Systrom of Instagram, all of these people — we understood this consciously. And we did it anyway
God only knows what it’s doing to our children’s brains.
Of course Lemmy and such inherit some of that design even without the money behind it - there’s certainly a little dopamine hit when I see that one of my comments has gotten a reply, or when I check and see that it’s been upvoted.
Not having the incentive to enshittify is good though.
Here… you can have a little dopamine… as a treat.
I got you both. Enjoy.
Oh, shit… I accidentally got two hits! And all I did was read what others commented.
I’m gonna try boofing mine. I’ll let you all know how it goes!
Well?
lucky you, i am just filled with dread
Take a hit on me friend
Thanks, you too!
I upvote the same way like I used to on Reddit, but I have no idea what the hell my karma is
I don’t even think it matters but it’s nice to see a post with like 800 upvotes
We’ve been bamboozled and conditioned
Sorry, here’s your dopamine 🔼
🐱
What if, instead of having to doomscroll to get that sweet, sweet dopamine hit, you’d just occasionally, and randomly be sent a message with a funny meme, or interesting story, or whatever it takes to convince your brain to hook you up?
That’s basically newsletters, forum digests, podcasts, etc.
Hell nah. I don’t give a damn about your up votes, down votes, replies. Hell I don’t even look at my inbox and I’ll be damned if I will end up back in this thread.
I’m just here for the occasional meme and maybe get a bit of news, and I’m all out of good news.
Ok then.