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Dopamine Fracking

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Re: Dopamine Fracking

#201

Post by ErroneousBosh »

zimpenfish wrote: post #81
ErroneousBosh wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I lived in Glasgow for 20-odd years, where you can get food from any region of any country in the world made by people from that region of that country, right there, fresh, right in front of you. I've also eaten Taco Bell. You're not missing much. It is much as you'd expect, a stepped-on Americanised parody of Mexican food. Even in the small north-eastern city of 150,000 people I live near now there are at least thre…

> The rest of those don't really exist in the UK (yet!). Chipotle and Lime scooters do exist in the UK (and have for a while.) Waymo (I'm assuming the driverless taxis here) are just starting to appear in London. Apparently there's an Orange Theory Fitness in Derby (which has the same logo as the US one and therefore I'm assuming it's the same company.) (Amazon and some smaller stores have been doing "subscribe and s…

> Still the best Pad Thai I've had.

You know you've found the right spot when you're the only white guy in a hundred metre radius of the place.

Small north-east of Scotland town, county cricket match at the cricket club between predominantly Indian and Pakistani teams. Food trucks came up from Leeds to do the catering. Every time I went up to one the guy behind the counter would look at me with wide eyes and say in a concerned tone of voice "You know what's in this, right? You know what you're eating?"

Dude, hit me with the desi shit, keep it coming. Yes of course I know what it is, it's not like I've never had mutton liver before. Here's 20 quid, package some up for me to stick in the freezer.

Re: Dopamine Fracking

#202

Post by plastic-enjoyer »

Xmd5a wrote: post #159
BonerWiener wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nothing kills a discussion like when someone just saying "I disagree" with zero explanation. They're not really contributing just cluttering up the comments. At least give a reason why.

Cant / currently cooking creme diplomate.

You are forgiven

Re: Dopamine Fracking

#203

Post by BiteCode_dev »

fireflash38 wrote: post #169
plastic-enjoyer wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Maple syrup is a big one. I can count on one hand the number of times I've been to even fancy breakfast restaurants and had real maple syrup. Cracker barrel used to, decades ago now. It's all garbage corn syrup now. I'd rather not have syrup at all than that cloying, thick, gross stuff.

A Canadian friend brought me back 2 bottles of local maple syrup as a gift. Ok, I'm a pretentious Frenchman when it comes to food and I do think most North Americans have no idea how real food tastes.

But that stuff, I didn't know how it really tasted before trying the OG thing.

Globalisation gave us the illusion of experiencing the world.

Re: Dopamine Fracking

#204

Post by diydsp »

plastic-enjoyer wrote: post #104
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…

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…

>French cultural pessimism

Specifically Jean Baudrillard describes copies of copies with decreasing relavence and quality. But more sinisterly, the loss of knowing what is real, important, safe, efficacious.

His work builds extensively on Plato, Lucretius, and Deleuze's concept of the Simulacrum.

Re: Dopamine Fracking

#205

Post by plastic-enjoyer »

api wrote: post #192
plastic-enjoyer wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

When it comes to these lines of thinking, and to romanticism which is closely related, I have a hard time not seeing some of it as disdain for the middle class and nostalgia for the stories classic aristocracy told about itself. I’m American and grew up inundated with cultural disdain for the suburbs, tract housing, malls, all those things, and at some point I asked, well, what then? What’s better? Sauce made slowly…

I don’t see my post as making any judgement, let alone offering criticism. It’s simply my observation that many people prefer the artificial stuff to the original product.

But since you’ve brought this up, I’d argue that it’s not a question of elitism, but rather that 'the masses' simply isn’t given access to these products. What they get is an abstraction of the original, which merely imitates the flavour but abstracts anything else away. Take, for example, meat or vegetable stock, which is now a staple in every kitchen in the form of powder or stock cubes. If you take a look at the ingredients and nutritional values, they’re rather disappointing. The masses may get access to the taste, but not to the nutrients.

Re: Dopamine Fracking

#206

Post by cmrdporcupine »

cassepipe wrote: post #139
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…

As someone who has struggled with understanding Adorno for a long time, I found this recent review of a book about Frankfurt School a pleasant read : https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/book-review-the-dialectical...

You can read and enjoy Adorno in bits without swallowing a whole overarching theoretical foundation. As he also often wrote that way.

Minimia Moralia for example is a collection of more personal and essay form writings.

Also I absolutely love Negative Dialectics as a piece of theoretical writing but I am not convinced it fits into the standard "Frankfurt school" label. It's more about epistemology than it is about culture.

(He was, however, more than a bit of a snob. I wouldn't take his musings on culture at face value unless you truly believe -- like he did -- that jazz and other popular music is just intrinsically and objectively worse than Bach forever and always absolute truth. Ahem.)

Re: Dopamine Fracking

#207

Post by api »

plastic-enjoyer wrote: post #205
api wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When it comes to these lines of thinking, and to romanticism which is closely related, I have a hard time not seeing some of it as disdain for the middle class and nostalgia for the stories classic aristocracy told about itself. I’m American and grew up inundated with cultural disdain for the suburbs, tract housing, malls, all those things, and at some point I asked, well, what then? What’s better? Sauce made slowly…

I don’t see my post as making any judgement, let alone offering criticism. It’s simply my observation that many people prefer the artificial stuff to the original product. But since you’ve brought this up, I’d argue that it’s not a question of elitism, but rather that 'the masses' simply isn’t given access to these products. What they get is an abstraction of the original, which merely imitates the flavour but abstra…

I didn’t mean to come off as criticizing you, just providing a balancing counterpoint on some of the ideas.

The question is: can you give billions of people the “authentic” version?

In some cases you can. In the US at least there’s boutique groceries and farmers markets that sell more authentic organic food that usually does have better nutritional value. But it costs more.

The artificial mass market imitation is cheaper because it is thermodynamically cheaper. It takes far less labor (the most costly input to almost all processes) and it substitutes things that can be bulk produced at a lower unit cost. Being less nutritious probably directly correlates since nutrition is chemical complexity is lower entropy, higher energy, harder to scale.

There’s a lot of rare “authentic” experiences that cannot be scaled. That means most people can’t have them, ever.

You can’t have both rarity / exclusivity and democratization / equality. One side has to give.

Re: Dopamine Fracking

#208

Post by srcnkcl »

thyselius wrote: post #186
stymaar wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

Torment nexus.

Re: Dopamine Fracking

#209

Post by kriro »

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.

Re: Dopamine Fracking

#210

Post by donaldjbiden »

spwa4 wrote: post #95
designerarvid wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Guessing by your examples that you are American. Maybe you are aware, or perhaps not, that in Europe many view your culture as the one that has taken this to its extreme. Some envy it, some don’t.

Where in Europe do you find large amounts of small stores? (and for real, not fake). Or is your point that Europe has a different supermarket chain per country? Malls have the same stores across countries ... but they differ, somewhat, if you move from one country to the next. And they're fake. Every company has 3-4 store brands these days so malls have 4-5 stores that look different, but aren't. So ... what a differ…

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