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Dopamine Fracking

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Re: Dopamine Fracking

#181

Post by basisword »

PeterStuer wrote: post #28
hattmall wrote: post #25

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 robust…

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.

I don't think that's a millennial thing. If you think back to the whole 'hipster' era, yes peer approval was a big part of it but so was local/artisan/unique stuff. Franchises were the things that were completely avoided. That predictability is much more of a modern requirement.

Re: Dopamine Fracking

#182

Post by Cthulhu_ »

anon-3988 wrote: post #127

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 someon…

I'd say selfies just aren't for you, and that's fine. For many others it's not, and friends at a distance may just like seeing their friends' faces instead of just the subject. But I don't understand it myself because I'm outside of those circles. (and less face oriented but that's probably the autism/introversion lmao)

Re: Dopamine Fracking

#183

Post by rapnie »

Gigachad wrote: post #180
rapnie wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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 photo…

Yes, you explained better. It is having the camera always with you and the abundance of photos that are the result, which for most people including me are too much and too boring to sort out. I find myself in the opposite situation now, when at a happening or event I take no photos at all, because I came to hate taking them. Feel it is not worth spoiling the moment. But that means not recording the valuable moments for later, so I may come to regret that at old age.

Re: Dopamine Fracking

#184

Post by Gigachad »

raverbashing wrote: post #142
zimpenfish wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For me (considerably older than millenials) it's not choice fatigue or "default to bland and tested", it's "if I'm paying a small fortune for coffee / food[0], I do not want a crappy serving just because the barista/cook stubbed their toe / broke up / got bad news / etc. this morning and they're wildly off their game." Starbucks, McDonalds, Papa Johns, etc. do not make "great" refreshments but they make them of a con…

Agree But then, once I got to certain McD locations, and got a (very) disappointing experience, then it's hard to come back to the brand. (it might have changed, I think this was over 10 yrs ago) but still

At least in Australia pretty much all the chain places like McDonalds/subway etc suck so bad it’s incredible they are still in business. They aren’t even winning on price.

Re: Dopamine Fracking

#185

Post by shellkr »

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.

Re: Dopamine Fracking

#186

Post by thyselius »

stymaar wrote: post #102
raumgeist wrote: post #61

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 wi…

> 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 an…

In The book, what happens after?

Re: Dopamine Fracking

#187

Post by akoboldfrying »

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.

Re: Dopamine Fracking

#188

Post by Gigachad »

veunes wrote: post #85
kalx wrote: post #63

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?

Sending someone a dumb meme can also be a form of affection

Occasionally if it’s very relevant to the person. But so many just dump every single thing they saw on TikTok in your DMs.

Re: Dopamine Fracking

#189

Post by loorke »

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".

Re: Dopamine Fracking

#190

Post by hntiz »

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.

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