I have an addictive personality. I wish that meant that people couldn’t get enough of me. It doesn’t. I’m the type of person that can’t get enough of a good thing. Once I start, I find it difficult to stop. Throughout my youth I’ve experimented, abused and misused substances. Alcohol and nicotine had significant places in my 20’s, mainly because they were legal and readily available. Other substances made the occasional appearance, usually as an encore to a good drinking session, but I never allowed them to overstay their welcomes.
I understood my predilection for substance-induced-escapism and when I dabbled in anything stronger than alcohol I told myself there was one substance I’d never touch. It had been hammered into me that heroine was insanely addictive, and all it took was one encounter to get hooked. That is where I drew the line.
In retrospect, I was lucky that heroine didn’t appear as an option in my social circles – I don’t know if my curiosity would have overpowered my fear.
Social media
I’ve written previously about social media algorithms and how they’re designed to be addictive. I have dabble in Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest and even Google+ when it was still a thing. I have weaned myself off each one of these. There is nothing stronger, addiction-wise, on my phone than LinkedIn which is about the substance equivalent of smelling your own fart.
When it comes to the one algorithm that I won’t touch, it is Tik Tok. From what I’ve read it is the social media equivalent of heroine. I don’t know if my personality will be able to withstand its dopamine injections, so I’ve decided to avoid it.
Maybe it is time we start talking about algorithms in the same way we talk about drugs. Maybe we should view people walking in public with their phones the same way we see drunk people stumbling along a sidewalk. Perhaps, when our attention is being manipulated by an algorithm, we should be considered to be ‘under the influence’.
I’m still trying to addict myself to vegetables.