Dopamine Culture

_{On modern socities dependenacy on distraction, overindulgence, and convienance.}

The State of Dopamine Culture

In their article 'the state of culture' The Honest Broker writes about the clear difference between entertainment and art, and the clear divide between the two. Entertainment is made purely for the sake of entertaining and moreso serving an audience while art is more of an outlet for the artists themselves, created as a channel for expression. Most think it is a matter of either selling out and catering purely to an audience, or creating for yourself and hoping that the audience resonates with your own individual vision. What is now trumping entertainment is DISTRACTION, a result of the fastly evolving dopamine culture. Distraction is mindless, easily consumable content that doesn’t offer much substance to retain long term. The honest broker writes that “It’s a huge business, and will soon be larger than arts and entertainment combined. Everything is getting turned into TikTok” Instagram and facebook reels, for example. The Honest Broker goes on to share this infograph,

infograph

The infograph shows the model for addiction. They go on to explain that the content being churned out is facilitated in such a manner to cause an addictive cycle. This is due to the digital dopamine cycle wired into social media apps by their creators. What once began as art, turned into entertainment. Entertainment devolved into distraction, and in current society, distraction is turning into an addiction. The honest broker writes "Everything is designed to lock users into an addictive cycle.

The platforms are all shifting to scrolling and reeling interfaces where stimuli optimize the dopamine doom loop.

Anything that might persuade you to leave the platform—a news story, or any outside link—is brutally punished by their algorithms. It might liberate you from your dependent junkie status, and that can’t be allowed.

But wait, there’s more! Apple, Facebook, and others are now telling you to put on their virtual reality headsets—where you are swallowed up by the stimuli, like those tiny fish in my food chain charts. You’re invited to live as a passive recipient of make-believe experiences, like a pod slave in The Matrix."

I encourage you to go and read the article yourself, as it is truly insightful and terrifying. A necessary read. I will leave you with this lasting infographic shared by the honest broker, that shows how dopamine culture is effecting everything, not just social media users.

Dopamine Culture goes hand in hand with Convienance Culture. So i'd like to link you to my Observations on Convienance Culture" here. . Amazon, doordash, and google searches, are all examples of convenient crutches.

Ayan Artan from the Rent Free With Ayan Substack writes “we are a people intent on running away from ourselves. more scrolling, more apps, more ten second videos masquerading as ‘information’. shrink into yourself. yes, like that. google that word because you can’t even remember the last time you saw a physical dictionary, and watch as we condition you to accept the first AI aided summary as a definition. watch the machines we are draining the world’s resources for get smarter as you get dumber. — people used to be lead by their moral compass; now, it is our algorithms that lead us. –if we all see the same five clips on tiktok, the same three luca guadagnino films, how will we ever be individual?” in their article 'In defense of pretension'