thinking about a thing wrote about how (i may be mangling this) prohibitions against sex work in ancient cultures may have been about preventing people from being confused about the true source of production and it's really stuck with me
Conversation
probably not super clear. related example: fundamentally what makes something pornography is that it promises your body you will have sex and then breaks that promise. i think modern civilization is built to an uncomfortably large extent on these kinds of broken promises
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been thinking about twitter this way too lately. you can string people along for years on a platform that promises connection and never quiiiiite 100% delivers on that promise
just enough intermittent reinforcement to keep people coming back
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if you actually give people what they want they might not come back, but if you 10-50% give people what they want and continually promise in a bunch of little ways that they'll get more then you can create a customer for life
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i spent a lot of time while i was off twitter playing video games and modern video games are becoming broken-promises-platforms too
new content, new quests, new characters
analyzing it in terms of "dopamine" misses the point: this is *weaponized hope*
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but is it weaponized hope if the game is actually fun to play right now, while you're playing it?
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like that's one of the reasons I got so hooked on Warframe: sure it's grindy and there's a lot of shit to do, but nailing Grineer in the face with your MK-1 bow in the starting mission is some of the best gunplay I've ever seen and it doesn't let up from there on out
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although I think I kind of agree that the position of hope might be the one players take?
I was always getting in fights with WF players who were always complaining about the new update not coming out fast enough and didn't seem to realize the shit we already have kicks ass
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i know i have definitely played video games where it was hard to tell if i was actually having any fun but i had successfully gotten completely sucked into whatever the grind loop was
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one of the games i played the most... i had fun for like... one fairly glorious battle, but mostly i was grinding. it's very grindy