The subject title line says it all.

It is something I have tremendous trouble with, and I intend to switch this around. But I need to focus on a project that is worth putting work in and getting the results. There is no point denying that every time I start making posts, however, that my enjoyment of the work diminishes. I think a lot of it is down to expecting a result from the posts, which is all the "dopamine" hits we expect to get as it proves "validation" or "acceptance" within a society obsessed with attention.

How we became dependent on Attention

My main focus has always been on trying to make a project that's worth working on for the likes or the money. Money is the currency of freedom, and the more money we have, we invariably get more freedom. This is why people are becoming more and more addicted to short bursts of dopamine.

If your post gets nowhere near the number of likes you expect, your dopamine source dwindles and you must seek it out from somewhere else. Whether it's playing a video game, indulging in fantasies real or otherwise, food escapes or going to more dangerous territories virtual or not, the desire to seek the dopamine levels to get your "enjoyment" is a very real and very dangerous path.

Not only does the dopamine addiction consume your every day life, you become dependent on it. If dopamine becomes your source of happiness, then nothing will make you happy enough to enjoy life.

Therefore, to get the dopamine, we try to seek out ways to achieve that dopamine. For most people, it's validation -- feeling important or useful to society. This is fundamental to our every being, because usefulness translates to happiness. We are social creatures, therefore social contributions to society is part of our survival instincts, something no other animal on planet earth has to contend with.

Invariably, this does make us dangerous when we feel isolated and not part of society. Neurodivergent people get the worst end of the stick, because they struggle with every day life, struggle to make friends even when they try to fit in. They are seen as unusual to most, even at the best of times.

How does this translate to money, you might then ask?

Attention is a source of income. While virtual and not presently a tradeable commodity (at least not in its entirety), the principle remains that those with the most attention have a far easier time generating an income translated from the following they have. Communities are developed from people who know their audience and how to influence their decisions, particularly of a financial nature. While this is not considered dark or sinister, it does present a challenge for people seeking validation versus those who manipulate those seeking validation. This is what you might consider the consumers and the marketers.

As a consumer, you're looking for something that gets your dopamine hit, similar to seeking attention, except the role of the dopamine hit is sourced differently. Consumers consume content, which if it doesn't get a dopamine hit, it doesn't warrant hitting the "like" button. Likewise, influencers, bloggers and social media gurus sell content for attention, which requires consumers to consume their content. The same is said for any other type of content. Everything is a quick dopamine hit with diminishing returns.

As Attention becomes the commodity in principle, dopamine being the source of happiness from which that Attention is dependent, it translates to something far darker and more sinister as the diminishing returns increases with time.

Conclusion? Attention becomes the source of evil.

How Evil Permeates in Attention-Seeking

As human beings becoming deprived of our source of attention, primarily from the obsession with short bursts of dopamine, the more quickly we succumb to quicker and cheaper methods of obtaining that dopamine. We become so dependent on it that we become narcissistic, or worse, psychopathic, and getting to the point where we have no remorse for our actions. Stating obvious things on social media repetitively for the sole purposes of generating likes is no longer classed as "attention seeking", it's becoming classed as "attention dumbing".

In what I call "attention dumbing", I'm talking about how the quality of content has been dumbed down for the average consumer to draw more attention, thus in turn generating an increased source of dopamine.

Your first post didn't get as much attention, but it's high quality content. People give it likes because it's high quality, but you want more. So, next time you make a post, you parrot your previous post in a different tone, shorten it, and make it more consumer-friendly. In theory, the post should generate more likes and more attention, and in most cases that's probably right.

However, the quality of the post goes down. Your existing audience knows this, but your gambling that the more consumer-friendly version of your original post is going to get more attention. If this is confirmed from statistics, the likelihood is you will repeat this method and follow the numbers. Why wouldn't you? It would be stupid not to, because the statistics clearly show positive trends.

I go on a tangent here, I realise, but my point is that creativity and quality of content is diminished because we fall prey to stats and trends, never to return. If we lose attention, we attempt to fight it back with whatever we can muster, even if it means sacrificing the sources of dopamine that are longer lasting and more beneficial to our health -- like exercising, socialising with close friends, meditating, cooking, cleaning, etc.

Yes, cleaning is indeed a source of dopamine. It's not the act of cleaning that does it, it's the sense of reward for when we start living in an environment that's less likely to permeate the evil attention-seeking devices that our present world is currently tormented with.

So, the real Conclusion?

Actually, my title is probably wrong. It should be entitled, "Regular Posting = Bad, Irregular Posting = Good".

Most people post frequently with the aim to get that quick source of dopamine, to generate a following as quickly as possible, often off the back of mediocre blogs or poor quality information. The problem is most consumers don't know any better. Through consumer ignorance, we've normalised poor quality, set the expectations low and destroyed creativity in the process. We as consumers have never once turned around and thought -- "this source of dopamine is very low quality. I'm going to go to the gym instead and have a half-an-hour workout that leaves me feeling great for the rest of the day." Instead, we think -- "this source of dopamine is awful, so let's do it three times more and it might feel better later". That three times becomes four times, then five times, then six times, and of it goes into infinity until we break the loop.

No company on planet earth is going to change up their tactics until most of their consumer-base has jumped ship, only then would quality follow where the attention has gone.

In reality, consumers are to blame for the poor quality of life we are forced to face every day. Only we decide to turn it back around, or we can continue falling down this slippery slope until the end, perhaps when the world's economy has already crashed.

Thanks for reading.