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The key development was growing up with an always connected smartphone. There was a period between the early 90s and the mid 00s where kids grew up with a concept of the internet, but not everyone had it, it was hard to get access to so you treated your time in it preciously, and because of this you had several other methods of communicating with friends (like actually calling their landline and actually asking their parents if they are free to talk on the phone.)

Kids who grew up in the 80s were too early to have had the internet at all. But kids who grew up in the 00s, notably after the iPhone came out in 06, grew up very differently. The internet wasn't a precious resource, but an always available utility ready to be consumed at will.

This generation is growing up in a never ending onslaught of advertisements and peer pressure the likes of which we didn't experience. They are all guinea pigs for the Facebooks of the world, subjects of the A/B psychographic targeting grind. Their dopamine receptors have been primed since birth to go crazy at the sight of a like.

Anyway, that's my take on it as someone who grew up in this tiny golden era of the internet.

Wouldn't all the overstimulation harden them to dopamine attacks? Normally if you're exposed to something you get used to it, especially if it's a pleasure.

I think that’s only true if it’s a predictable reward function; if you add a random variable, in the words of Mr. Miyagi, “no can defense.”

https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2018/01/12/birdcage-liners/

> How do we prevent extinction? By only giving treats some of the time. So the dog learns something more subtle. When my master says come and I obey, I might get a treat. Sometimes I do, sometimes I don’t. That way, if I obey and don’t get the treat, I shouldn’t panic. I should still always come when he says come because that’s still the best way to get the most treats. Intermittent reinforcement works better.

> This sounds like what Facebook was doing to me.

> Normally if you're exposed to something you get used to it, especially if it's a pleasure.

Heroin, nicotine, sugar... People just increase dosages.

Sure, but that doesn't stop you from seeking the pleasure still. Ever been to a casino? In the worst case we call this behavior addiction.

That's a common misconception of how dopamine works.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/women-who-stray/2017...

Is your name short for Pavlov?

Wouldn't all the heroin harden the junkie to the effects of heroin? ;)

Yes, heroin tolerance is a thing.

Yes, but crucially it doesn't cause the user to use less heroin.

It just means that to get the same pleasure you need more dopamine.

I was born in 1980, and for a time was embarrassed to admit I met my first girlfriend via a local BBS. Now, I was a bit unusual in that I grew up with access to computers (mother is a programmer) -- though back during the early-mid 90s you were 'offline' most of the time, and only connected to services to check mail a few times a day (with the occasional overnight software download).

This always-online stuff is good and maddening at the same time. And I still don't "get" social media and probably never will (I don't want to either, it's a giant time sink - my wife is always pecking at her smartphone. Seriously, we're in the same house, stop texting me).

hey its me your wife

I feel like that doesn't explain the amount of effort people put into earning karma on Slashdot. It started as a way to highlight good posts and condemn bad ones to well-earned obscurity, but people worked hard for that karma. Why? Was it because it represented something to them? Because people have a drive to maximize any score publicly connected to an identity they, er, identify with? Addiction to internet points seems to have happened as soon as internet points were invented, no mobile device required. Although I'm sure there's an exception whose "failure" might be informative.

Look at /. as more of community. As with any community, they have their own ideas on what confers status in the group. Something as silly as a low ID number there gives you great weight in the community. Karma gives you the ability to judge others, and also to act as against the group (I have a lot of karma, so I feel I have the standing to say something unpopular and get attacked for it).

This is why people accumulate it.

Agency, fuck you points.

I have a low uid, and a ton of karma. One comment, and I get mod points.

I rarely participate these days, but when I do, it's always noticed.

These dynamics were discussed when the mod system and voting were being put together back in the day.

At a first pass there's a pretty simple explanation to this. It's an outwardly displayed and quantified of group social acceptance and value. High karma posts are pushed forward and get a lot of attention and high karma users are seen as valuable members because they've brought quality content/commentary to the communities. I think most points that work are like that, they're an expression of positive attention and praise which we know lights up all sorts of low level reward centers in the brain.

You can ask the same about stackoverflow reputation.

I think someone of the change has come from the realization that you can turn likes/eyeballs into IRL money. Whether its from things like youtube monetization or being paid to promote products and lifestyles, as I've heard people do on instagram.

I agree on this. When you have big businesses commercially incentivised to promote addictive behaviour it's going to be hard to change the collective behaviour and its potentially harmful impact

it's ok, you have a 5k rank on HN!

but... I think it just got normalized. It was like online dating, a lot of people wouldn't admit / kept it quite guarded that they met their partner online. Now it's almost odd if you didn't.

Two good friends of mine connected on a dating side and eventually got married. The funny part is that they knew each other already; the three of us were friends in college and all lived in the same dorm.

Seems to me more common on Twitter, moreso as a way of shortcuts to figuring out who (most followers) and what (most retweets/favorites) to pay attention to.

It sort of makes sense there, but it still would seem lame to me for the average person to publicly admit to caring about FB, Instagram, and Hacker News likes and engagement (obviously everyone does at least a little privately). I'm not hip though. Is this still the case or not?

>Were there a set of key events that led to this normalization of what used to be a frowned upon behavior?

Influencer marketing getting popular most likely.

It might depend on when you think it started.

Does usenet fit the bill ? (no ‘likes’ per se, but the number of answers in a thread would be a good proxy)

Or blog rings where people would link to your pages and you’d monitor link numbers and page views ?

or just the number of comments on your “guestbook” section of your blog ?

I am not sure if those were more or less legitimate to accumulate than likes. My parents sure didn’t understand what we could be doing on the internet (I passed it as a research tool while still studying) but friends would proudly show their blog numbers, there was a hierarchy of well respected posters on boards, and there was a clear social effect IRL during off meetings.

In a way I think the numbers game started the minute something could be counted regarding stuff you did online.

I'm at the tail end too, and don't "get it" but I can see it for what it is, I think. I think for a number of people, money is more of an achievement than something you convert in to goods and services. It's a number on a leaderboard to track and I think likes/favorites/hearts on Social Media may be real similar and far easier to achieve since there is little to no risk and very little work required. They collect them for recognition, self-esteem and to rank higher on a leaderboard, not much more to it. They are earning that next level and winning a game.

Pretending to be what you view as normal/perfect is nothing new. Every family in the 50s was not Leave It To Beaver.

If anything, you might be seeing seeing the tail-end of that kind of pretending. But probably not. The internet is just the newest place to keep up appearances to those around you.

those that now what a dial-up modem sounds like and those that don't, and to think there was also a time when it was a big deal to be able to also talk on the phone while surfing the information superhighway