There Is No Spoon.

My name is André, and I am an addict.

I am addicted to convenience. To ease. To instant gratification.

I am addicted to constant stimulation, the doom scroll, and cute dog videos.

I am addicted to dopamine.

I'm probably part of the last generation to truly know what it was like to live without a smart phone. To live without being constantly connected. Being constantly on.

I remember the novelty of getting a pager when I was 14. Thinking that it was so cool to be contactable. Then realising the only messages I got were from my mum telling me to come home. The promise of technology always gets me.

I remember the excitement of getting a mobile phone for the first time when I went to uni. I remember lusting after that Nokia banana phone that Morpheus had in The Matrix. The thrill of choosing my ringtone. The anticipation of hearing my text alert. Text messages would cost 10p a pop back then, so everything you sent or received felt important, intentional.

When Steve Jobs announced the release of the iPhone, it truly felt magical. It was straight out of SciFi, Star Trek, Tricorders. And then the world changed. I didn't see it coming. But slowly and surely I was on my path to Dopamine Addiction.

I've been both a user and a pusher of dopamine. Back in the early 2010s I was in full tech start-up mode. The Facebook movie had just come out, everyone was reading The Lean Startup by Eric Ries, I had an app company, and we were rapidly learning all about the principles of app engagement and gamification. The goals were simple. The more you could keep eyeballs glued to the screen, to your app in particular, the higher engagement you could claim, and the more funding you could get from Venture Capitalists.

We learned heavily from the computer games and gambling industries. It was all about ensuring enough inconsistent dopamine hits to reinforce the core behavioural loop that we wanted users to do. And the behaviour was all about using our product. We were trying to create addicts. That's what the system set us up to do.

And here I am over a decade later, on the other side. Living proof that the system achieved it's goal of creating a highly addicted user, unable to separate myself from giving the system what it wants, hours of my time, my precious attention, my presence.

I highly recommend reading the article ‘The State of the Culture, 2024’ by Ted Gioia, who describes this Dopamine Culture perfectly.

He describes how our creative culture and economy has been changing. The first major shift was from creating art (what we want to create) to creating entertainment (giving the public what it wants). But now we have moved into a post-entertainment world where distraction is king. This is the world of TikTok and video reels. Short bursts of distraction that causes ceaseless activity, be it scrolling or swiping. And it's this behaviour that causes the release of dopamine and the creation of addiction. This is what apps and tech platforms feed us today.

If I turn a critical eye to my endless scrolling of Instagram, Youtube and anything else with an algorithm-determined feed, I can't help but agree. But it gets worse. I've noticed that even though I'm glued to my screen, I no longer enjoy the constant stream of content I consume. I'm now scrolling to avoid the pain of dopamine depravation. Scrolling to avoid the painful hole in my life if I put my phone down. It happens with all serious chemical dependencies from alcohol to opiates. There's a word for this - anhedonia, and it's a hallmark of addiction.

So what do I do about my addiction? Although they say Ignorance is Bliss, I don't get to pop the blue pill like Neo. And I don't think I would want to if given the choice. I admit that there are many times where I feel hopeless. How can I fight the billions of dollars that tech companies throw at making me an addict?

Awareness without hope can be a very lonely place, and I've sat there for too long now. But I've realised that the key is to act.

"Hope is not the condition or cause of action. Hope is the consequence of action. And those who fail in hope should act, practically or conceptually, so that they may hope"

Cornel West and Roberto Unger

So I have chosen to act. I have chosen to reclaim my attention, my presence, my soul. And I'm telling you here, putting my words and intentions out in the world so that I can hold myself to account. I'm deleting all social media and algorithm driven content feeds from my phone. For me that's Instagram, Reddit, Substack, Youtube and even Amazon. If I want to use these things I can go and turn on my laptop; intentionally rather than get caught in a mindless phone-scroll. I've also deleted my email apps from my phone as I've noticed myself mindlessly checking for new emails over and over again.

At Open House, we are also choosing to no longer participate in this culture of addiction. Historically we have struggled with our marketing and presence on social media for precisely these reasons. In order to gain more visibility, increase engagement, and boost our followers, we have to play in to Instagram's algorithm. This means creating short, snappy reels with clickbaity headlines - content designed to distract and provide shallow hits of dopamine. We have to be part of the problem. We have to become pushers ourselves.

And we've decided to say no to all of that by scaling back our Instagram presence and deleting the vast majority of our posts. Although for now we are still keeping our Instagram account, from here on we will be focusing on creating art, rather than entertainment, distraction or addiction. We are planning a series of longer-form ‘small films’ that tell the stories of the people in our team, our partners and our community - a platform for the Humans of Hope Valley and beyond. 

We are taking action, and with that comes a glimmer of hope. Excitement even. Anticipation of our minds being freed. We're taking the red pill.

Let's see how deep the rabbit hole goes.

André