How does it feel?
Opening Instagram doesn’t make me feel good anymore. I’ve lost control over my feed. Instagram used to be a place where I could get inspired by the artists I chose to follow. I decided what I paid attention to. But it’s been less and less that lately. Now, they shove the most attention-grabbing thing in front of you, often from someone you don’t follow. You no longer get to decide what you pay attention to. They decide.
Be it in video, written word, audio or whatever form social media takes next, interacting with people is just so compelling and platform holders seem to be getting better and better at it. In part because they’ve discovered and formalised the action-reward loops games pioneered. I am scared that we may be looking at a terminal decline; a world where games get increasingly squeezed out as younger generations give less and less time to games. We’re commercial AM radio, broadcasting to dwindling and ageing audience. Then one day they just switch us off. [...]Increasingly, I feel like the hardship the games industry is facing is less of a blip and more of an inability to adapt to a new normal. Critically, I fear solving this issue is fundamentally impossible because the root cause sits well beyond ‘games’ — the unique thing we held a monopoly over is now being offered everywhere, better, easier and cheaper.
For many of us, eating has surprisingly little to do with hunger. We eat out of boredom, for entertainment, to comfort or reward ourselves. Try to be aware of why you’re eating, and ask yourself if you’re really hungry—before you eat and then again along the way. (One old wives’ test: If you’re not hungry enough to eat an apple, then you’re not hungry.) Food is a costly antidepressant. [...]Choose quality over quantity, food experience over mere calories. Or as grandmothers used to say, “Better to pay the grocer than the doctor.”
How does it feel? How does it make you feel? Beware empty calories and snack-sized slop.