Smarter people than me have talked about how Twitter and other social media feeds engage our brains much like a slot machine—every pull to refresh gives a small chance of hitting the jackpot—rage, dunks, laughs!—but most of the time just offer low-grade tedium. And yet we keep pulling down. Yglesias strikes me as a sort of micro version …
Smarter people than me have talked about how Twitter and other social media feeds engage our brains much like a slot machine—every pull to refresh gives a small chance of hitting the jackpot—rage, dunks, laughs!—but most of the time just offer low-grade tedium. And yet we keep pulling down. Yglesias strikes me as a sort of micro version of this same addiction model—most of the time he gives us pablum, but there’s always a small chance of a big payoff! The repetition is definitely part of the formula, but so is the chance of serendipity.
It's funny, I sometimes use a slot-machine metaphor from the reverse direction to explain why it makes sense to just keep posting -- it's like every pull of the arm is a chance for a payout (in this case, going viral). The more you pull, the better your chance is. (Though for the metaphor to work, it has to be a free-to-play slot machine, so it's not a great metaphor.)
Smarter people than me have talked about how Twitter and other social media feeds engage our brains much like a slot machine—every pull to refresh gives a small chance of hitting the jackpot—rage, dunks, laughs!—but most of the time just offer low-grade tedium. And yet we keep pulling down. Yglesias strikes me as a sort of micro version of this same addiction model—most of the time he gives us pablum, but there’s always a small chance of a big payoff! The repetition is definitely part of the formula, but so is the chance of serendipity.
It's funny, I sometimes use a slot-machine metaphor from the reverse direction to explain why it makes sense to just keep posting -- it's like every pull of the arm is a chance for a payout (in this case, going viral). The more you pull, the better your chance is. (Though for the metaphor to work, it has to be a free-to-play slot machine, so it's not a great metaphor.)