Fake food delivery site for the dopamine | Hacker News Reader

Fake food delivery site for the dopamine

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109 pointsguerrilla68 comments

> It's just to replicate the ritual of ordering food and give you the dopamine that the real process gives you.

I’m confused. How does the food-ordering process give you dopamine? It generally just gives me anxiety due to the uncertainties involved, until the food arrives in good condition, which here it won’t.

The link is to the BingeEatingDisorder subreddit. From the link,

> I know that at least for me, the actual process of ordering food delivery is part of the addiction

I'm seeing a business opportunity for a gambling site where it is extremely cheap to play, but the payout is always 0 dollars.

You've just invented the mobile games industry.

Hm, or even a gambling site that uses real money but where you always get your money back, eventually.

There were fintechs that did this, I think yotta and one other that was acquired by a big bank. I think it was (is?) popular but if I remember correctly they lost customer funds because of Synapses failure and the way the customer funds were organized they weren’t insured.

That would be interesting. Probably works best as a non-profit with donations or grants. Be a normal gambling setup, but with the expected value of all the games zero instead of negative. Advertise to existing gambling addicts. You might also be able to invert some of the dark patterns to encourage less addictive behaviour.

I expect the main threat would be that it might be possible to extract money with the system with clever statistical tricks.

I once had the strange experience of playing such a game. It was an "instant game" on Facebook Messenger, that simulated a slot machine casino. It didn't have a cash-out, so it was really just a game.

It had an auto-play, so I watched the dials spin and lights flash until my money ran out, and it prompted me to buy more.

The game played entirely by itself, until it inevitably lost. It ran with no meaningful player action other than selecting which slot machine and buying coins.

And it had a leaderboard, with Facebook profile photos and names of big winners that I can only assume spent real money to be there.

Progress Quest lives on in strange ways.

Well the context is that it was posted to a subreddit for people who struggle with binge eating. So I guess you can think of it as the equivalent of sucking on a lollipop when you're craving a cigarette.

think window shopping

which upon writing I realized may not even be something folks born after 2010 have even heard of...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Window_shopping

Do you get anxious when you order at a restaurant? There is the same exact uncertainty there compared to ordering ahead by 10 minutes while you are on the way there.

There is a very different uncertainty with a far shorter loop to remedy any problems. I have never sat in a restaurant thinking that [any food delivery-specific failure mode] will arise.

>with a far shorter loop to remedy any problems.

It is the same length. The difference is whether you are waiting at the restaurant or "waiting" in your car driving over.

No, I am not driving over, I am at home waiting for a delivery. If there is a problem with what is delivered there is a much longer remedy loop: restaurant kitchen to their table versus to my home.

There’s a thing with dopamine where it’s not actually about receiving the reward, it’s about doing the things that lead to the reward.

As weird as it sounds, going through the ordering process is all you need.

It's an absolutely a thing. My closet full of retro consoles, cyber decks, old monitors proves it. Anyone need an Apple Studio (2000's aluminum) for free? I can't stomach throwing it out or selling it for $20.

It's too fast. There should be an artificial pause while adding to cart or capturing the payment

Where are the promo pop ups and the CTA asking me if I want to buy a giant cookie, cheese sticks, or a 2 liter at 200% markup?

This would actually add to the effect because the “hit” depends on the anticipation.

IMO you should also wait half an hour for the food not to be delivered. Isn’t that the suspenseful part?

https://foodnevercome.com/

Practically no vegan options. Very realistic

Post the source instead of random reddit: https://foodnevercome.com/

I actually thought the Reddit context was quite helpful. I wouldn’t have guessed that this would be particularly meaningful for people with a binge eating disorder.

God damn, the AI-generated pics.

Well, since it's a site for Artificial Food Ordering, why not use AI images.

I wonder how Baudrillard would think about all this.

I need to enter a coupon code for more dopamine. And a loyalty program.

Free spins?

Seriously, the project's code name could be dopamine delivery. They could make it a demo of all the tricks.

and "cookie clicker" is already taken :-)

This is great. I need one for building permits.

Does this have the ridiculous dark patterns that Deliveroo in the UK has? “Pay a monthly fee for free deliveries!*

*We won’t tell you, but you might notice, we’ve now increased the service charge by almost the amount of what you saved on that free delivery.

Next step:

Fully customized sex worker service at your doorstep ... faked for the dopamine, of course.

This website works better than most sites I order from. Except for the delivery of course :)

No delivery and I’m still waiting for my refund - on par with the industry benchmark!

The hardest part of food delivery is the tip section. It's where you use all your brain power to make a decision. That's the only part I would have given me dopamine hit from pretend tipping. Missed opportunity.

This actually made me hungry.

I was really hoping to add some fries, a drink and to customize my burger. Not that I customize my burger except maybe take off the pickles or remove the ice from my drink, but it adds to the dopamine factor.

This is a key part of it - all the decision making, just like choosing the food, but making it yours.

OK, this actually worked as advertised. I feel dopamined.

I just wished the delivery took longer and there was a payment process that longer than an instant. Could have a saved card on file that you could use.

I like to tip my delivery person so they do not spit in my food.

Humans, huh

The curse of technology. If people still had to hunt their protein and grind corn by hand, we wouldn't need anti-binge-eating apps.

I just had double jaw surgery so I'm "eating" though a straw (or syringe).

At least I can order regular food with this.

Doesn't quite meet the fantasy threshold. I can't seem to filter by allergens or dietary restrictions.

Isn't it just like porn and video games work too. Weird no one thought of it before.

Counterproductive for me. Seeing all that tasty looking food makes me want to binge.

I almost ordered, but the delivery fee is way too high.

wait what? shouldn't it make you more hungry/angry? when the food doesn't come...

What??

Looks like a riff of the fake online shopping site. Kinda funny that the premise could be legit: All the novelty seeking and exploration behaviour and none of financial burden (or in this case, calories)

What fake online shopping site?

https://www.washingtonpost.com/wellness/2026/07/16/these-dop...

That's the semi-real shopping site's fake journalism site. Try to keep up!

What??

I somehow want to make a brick and mortar shop with products with 5-digit price tags and the famous brands, but they're all fake, and visitors can pick and choose all the fancy products they want. They can then go to the cashier and go through a simulation of the purchase of all those products, but walk out with nothing... Or maybe even a receipt so you can look at it and pretend you just bought those things, hah.

"The keys to the Lamborghini Aventador, and a Louis Vuitton bag. That'll be 350,000 dollars. How will you pay, ah with the made-up cheque? Certainly sir!".

Charge $40 for half an hour of this sort of entertainment (or more for a virtual chequebook with a bigger account behind it), rake in the bucks...

So effectively a downtime session of D&D where everyone levels up and goes shopping for gear.

shopping LARP

NFTs instead of nothing? equally worthless, but you can pretend otherwise

Whaaaaat?? In a world where brick and mortar retail has been almost completely replaced by Amazon and a handful of mega big-box retailers there's a market for people going through literally all of the steps required to shop local retail (including spending money)....to end up having purchased nothing? Are y'all on drugs??

We used to call that window shopping and it was free. Now get off my lawn!

That would be a fantastic art installation. In some places, landlords allow empty storefronts to be used for art.

You might get people to contribute satirical spins on different trends or designers.

I hope you or someone does it.

Growing up poor and seeing luxury stores, I thought that's how they work. i.e. they are just money laundering fronts. I could not fathom that someone would actually spend 20k on a handbag.

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