Exploiting the Brain’s Reward System Exploit
When an online service is free, you’re not the customer. You’re the product.
-Tim Cook
You’re the product and you always have been, but today, you just happen to be surrounded by seemingly innocous devices that have quietly consumed your brain’s attention. Even now, you are wagering this moment with the hope that there’s a reward on the other end; there will be. And the thrill you feel when you do find that reward is deeply addicting. Who could blame someone for wanting to win their life’s wagers?
It just turns out the game is now deeply rigged. A generation ago, there was no effective method to capture your joy and then continuously feed it back to you. Today, there is. That addictive feeling of winning? It’s fed to you over and over again. And each “tool” you have is competing to exploit these dopamine loops faster and more effectively.
This unpatchable exploit in our brain’s reward system is now exploited at every level by every modern tool. And the more you consume, the more you’re worth. The more you’re worth, the more you’re targeted. The more you’re targeted, the more you consume. And the cycle continues. The deeply evil way by which this is executed is probably best explained by the company that coined and then deprecated the phrase, “don’t be evil”: Google.
Google, Android, Chrome, YouTube, and You
YouTube is a modern miracle. Content of all types delivered just for you. Available for free. And endlessly at your fingertips. You can consume this in the bathroom, int he kitchen, in your car. Every three days, YouTube is delivered so much content, it would easily conusme your entire lifespan. Naturally, Google, by way of YouTube has an obligation to organize this content so you can consume what’s relevant.
And from there, only evil emerges. If you happen to taste the YouTube drug, you might be irreparably addicted. Every corner of your life has an endless YouTube spigot. Your life might just be consumed and you’ll begin wagering your life’s precious moments on content you assume adds value. In reality, your addicted.
In this Dopamine Detox experiment, as I’ll explain shortly, I decided to kill addictive applications. YouTube just happens to be unkillable. On your Android phone, you are unable to uninstall the app. On your Chrome browser, you are unable to log out of the website. And like a drug dealer, the application endlessly attempts to bring you back into the fold. Notifications haunt your devices.
From the company that wrote, “don’t be evil,” you have to wonder why you can’t log out of YouTube and why you can’t uninstall the YouTube app.