I am in conflict with dopamine machines. I am in conflict with AI. I am in conflict with humanism and anti-humanism, and related, in conflict with free will.

I get so overwhelmed thinking about any of this as I type it out, so please bear potential ramblings.

Dopamine machines. I think a lot about my friends who watch mind-rotting nothing-content whose only purpose behind the content being made is to stick eyes on it for as long as possible (ultimately for capital gain). I try to otherize some of these forms of content, but I think gauging whether something is mind-rotting can get really fuzzy really quickly. At the core of it is a capital incentive to make content that keeps attention the most, and this incentive has been around forever but it's only been recently that I've felt like it's truly refined to such a state that it's interfacing and exploiting our brains near directly.

• Content Farms / Shortform content (Tiktok, YT Shorts). RNG "contests"/"sports" ex. These are comparable to legalized slot machines. You gain no knowledge. You gain no understanding of others. You don't create anything. You get a stim with a purpose only to be replaced by the next video. You're doing nothing, and that's not necessarily wrong.

• Related: Iconography/UX - Like a tic, you pick up your phone and press your thumb on the surface to let yourself inside. You click the button that shows all your apps, and are presented with a multitude of colors that you've habitually assigned to various different mechanations. You click the app you deserve, and make slight motions over other slight motions (thumb likely) like a child tugging at its mother's dress for a new toy, everlasting comfortable "enjoyment", its next fix. But you no longer exist in this moment - the partial-object form that once tied desire->arm->hand->phone is more gestaltic to the machines that generate algorithmic dividualization, than the meatbag involved in anything more """""fulfilling"""""

• Final Fantasy XIV - Para-textual sources (e.g. wikis) making mistakes something that shouldn't happen. "Unoptimal play" is discouraged and given less leniency. I feel a lot of the times like I'm just pressing buttons As God Intended when I want to be analyzing enemies or bosses and trying to on-the-fly learn them or react to things. Ultimates/savages blend the two where the only way to complete that content is to play optimally, which I find more acceptable for some reason.

• Nostalgia Farms - "Corrupting the minds of the youth" with highly manufactured media that was from the ground-up designed for the purposes of Making The Number Bigger and nothing else. Disney princess, so many videogames (especially those pushed by larger power players like US/JP Govt and its consequences, though these machines make more than just primarily capital)

I had more written here but it's significantly later than (17-05813857) (its 17-20915120) so I'll put other things somewhere else another time.