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The Rise of Hyperpleasures (mereorthodoxy.com)
5 points by jseliger on June 7, 2024 | hide | past | favorite | 1 comment


There's a slight problem to the idea of "hyperpleasures": Your brain cannot uphold any state of excitement for longer than roughly fifteen minutes. It doesn't matter if it's a panic attack or the state of total bliss.

Unless you overwrite this with a drug that blocks the reuptake of certain neurotransmitters/hormones in your brain.

That's why video games or social media use small dopamine hits. That's also why TikTok/Youtube shorts work so well and why people loose their attention span and have issues following over a longer time. No dopamine hit when watching a 2 hour movie compared to the constant hits by other stuff.

So there is not a hyperpleasure that just boosts you into space when it comes to games and stuff, instead there is this drip of constant, small dopamine hits that gets you addicted.

This is all well known and documented when it comes to gambling addictions, especially in the context of gambling machines like one armed bandits and such.




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