Consume Product

It always seems like the more people get to know me, the less they actually like me. At first, it seems very promising, but over time, they start noticing the flaws, which are mainly the things I say and believe in. The things I don’t hide as well. It I’m only tolerable in small doses, and eventually, they just drift away or turn cold.

Back in the late 90s, Microsoft released "Everquest". In that game, they intentionally put some mechanics designed specifically to create addiction to the game, a compulsion to play the game that would even supersede necessary bodily functions.

It's a really simple formula, and anyone can use it to create addictions. Once you notice the pattern, you can almost instantly recognize things that can addict you. Knowing the pattern also shows you how to break the addiction if you have one.

Here's the pattern:

1. X causes a momentary sense of happiness, awe, wonder, whatever. Sparkly lights, bells, high-frequency sounds etc...
2. Every time the user does X hit that dopamine button and give them a hit.
3. Now, start backing off. It takes 2 X to get one hit. Now it takes 3 X. Now 4 X. And so on. You can grow exponentially if you like. 4 x, 8 x, 16 x, etc...

Eventually, you'll have the users doing X repetitively and endlessly, even though they get no dopamine hit anymore.

The key here is the backoff mechanism. A little bit of X will get you your hit, but then you need a little more, and a little more, and a little more. And the rewards just aren't as big as they used to be.

THIS is why drugs are addictive. If they always gave you the same hit, the same rush, every time you did them, then you wouldn't get addicted to them. You would know you could always reach for them and get that hit instantly, and you would do just enough to get you happiness and no more. But since drugs give you diminishing returns, and since the hit isn't as good as the first one, you start obsessing over drugs, you start taking more and more, or more often and more often, trying to find that rush that never comes, or comes to rarely that you can't remember when the last time you got that rush was.

A lot of video games and mobile games use this mechanism. I see it practically everywhere. Level up after swinging your sword once! Now you need to swing it twice! Now four times! And next thing you know, you're spending your weekend swinging that sword and never getting a level up. Maybe a level up once or twice a week, if you diligently mash the sword swinging button.

So pay attention to the diminishing returns and the exponential costs. That's a key indicator that you can very easily get addicted to the thing.

And the key to ending the addiction -- just don't play the game anymore. You can't play at level 1. You have to quit altogether. Once you see that the moment you start playing that game you are losing your entire soul, you are shoving poop down your throat, you are turning into a ridiculous ugly goblin and the only way to avoid it is to avoid the behavior altogether -- you are well on your way to recovery.

Find strength by just deleting a game you've been playing for years, pursuing fewer and fewer rushes with more and more work. Just delete your account and uninstall the game and forget you every played it. And then see how much free time you have on your hands now.

Pay attention to games that give you a rush for an action at a constant rate. Like, for instance, solitaire. You play what, 6 games to get a winning hand? That feels pretty good to win at solitaire. But you're almost always guaranteed a win every 6 or 7 hands, right? Many solitaire games allow you to play hands that are winnable only. Try doing that, and you'll notice how the game gets boring after winning 100 times in a row. There's no additional rush, just the same victory over and over again, with the same amount of work put into each one. If you get good at it, maybe it gets easier to get the wins over and over again, rather than being further and further apart. Notice how you can pick up solitaire while you're on the airplane, play for a few hours, and then put it down without ever thinking about it again for months or years? It's not addictive. It's like the opposite of addiction. Solitaire doesn't take time out of your schedule, you don't obsess about it, and you can always put it down, or avoid it altogether with no effort at all.

Now you know the pattern, know that jews only recently figured this pattern out and they are trying to abuse it everywhere.

Keep in mind -- it's the diminishing hits over longer and longer periods of working for that hit.

I've also caught social media sites doing this, intentionally hiding things you want to see from you to force you to crawl through a feed of meaningless posts. People are noticing how hard it is to find quality videos on youtube, why? Because they are intentionally hiding them from the users to try and drive engagement up.