Daniel Kahneman wrote that buying a lottery ticket does not buy you a significant chance of winning the lottery. What it actually buys you is the right to dream about winning the lottery and what you would do with all that money. You are buying hope.

Smart phones tap into this perverse penchant for self torture that humanity suffers from. We receive the little hit of dopamine every time there is a notification, because there is the chance that the notification could be telling us that we have a new like, a new subscriber, a new email about a job promotion, a new email about having won the lottery.

Of course, 999/1000 of the time, these notifications are immaterial and insignificant. But it still doesn’t stop us from developing a permanent physical attachment to our devices. Holding them and staring at them crooked-necked while they drip feed us hilarious 5 second clips of cute dogs or people falling over.

This is what we are being reduced to as a species. Consumerist data points in the digital capitalist market. Miserable eyes on ads. Eyes on products being used or worn to help set or predict next season’s trends. Eyes on trivial content that is preventing us from fulfilling our potential by distracting us from what we should be doing or what is going on in the world. Distracting us from improving ourselves and our situations, so that we become yet more dependent on the false hope. And so the digital dopamine cycle continues. Where does it end?

To be clear, I am not making any money from advertising while you read this. I’m writing it as therapy to encourage myself to stop using my phone so much. Wish me luck!