Stanford doctor explains how social media is hijacking our minds: "My patients derive little pleasure from these activities yet are unable to stop. Everything else in their life has gone gray. They're in a dopamine deficit state, and they’ve lost the ability to choose not to use."

Something I've noticed is that some right/ social conservative-leaning low-key online celebrities or YouTube personalities seem to be panicking about OnlyFans and how it "exploits simps" (aka lonely men). For example, Charisma on Command made a 20-minute video about this topic. It seems like a pretty overblown thing to me.

However, even accepting their argument that OnlyFans and camsites exploits lonely men (I think it's fair to assume most of those who pay for such things are men), I think these dating apps are much more exploitative of lonely people, and in a much more insidious way. At least, I'd venture to guess most people who pay for these newfangled pornsites with elements of a parasocial relationship thrown in (which is probably something that enhances the product for some people) know what they are paying for. Whereas the dating apps are mostly free (and as the cliché goes, when you don't pay, you're the product... but when you pay for Premium and bonus features in a desperate attempt to get noticed more by people of your preferred sex, you are also still the product), and the algorithm is anything but transparent.

/r/samharris Thread Parent Link - pairagraph.com