@themattmic.bsky.social
www.destimulate.com
Joseph Campbell on the art of destimulation:
24.07.2025 21:43 — 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
99% will read this and keep doomscrolling.
*Actually* breaking the cycle requires foolproof systems to keep your dopamine-monkey-mind at bay.
Get them in my free newsletter here ↓ destimulate.com
credit: @jackbutcher, visualize value
The science wasn't clear.
The industry systematically lied.
Today?
We know social media is designed to be addictive.
We feel our attention spans & intellect shrinking.
We watch ourselves compulsively scrolling for hours.
Yet we keep opening the apps anyway.
• Social media correlates with increased anxiety, depression, and sleep disorders
The most disturbing part for me is this:
We're not just victims.
We're willing participants in our own destruction.
In the 1950s, people *genuinely* didn't know cigarettes caused cancer.
IMO, Big Tech's legal reckoning is heading down this same inevitable path.
The evidence of harm is already overwhelming across all age groups:
• Americans check their phone 144 times per day
• Adults spend 10+ hours daily on screens
This is the exact same pattern from the 1990s when 46 state attorneys general sued Big Tobacco for deceiving the public about health risks.
The result?
The infamous 1998 Tobacco Master Settlement Agreement.
$206 billion in payments.
Strict marketing restrictions.
Lawsuits are already starting, following an eerily familiar pattern.
Seattle Public Schools sued TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, and Snapchat in 2023 for "exploiting the vulnerable brains of youth."
School districts in Pennsylvania, California, and New Jersey followed.
Chamath Palihapitiya, Facebook's former VP of Growth is even more blunt:
"The short-term, dopamine-driven feedback loops we have created are destroying how society works. You are being programmed."
They deliberately designed platforms to be addictive.
They absolutely know it.
Sean Parker, Facebook's 1st president, admitted they designed it to exploit "a vulnerability in human psychology":
"The inventors, creators — it's me, it's Mark [Zuckerberg], it's Kevin Systrom on Instagram — understood this consciously. And we did it anyway."
Tobacco executives knew cigarettes were addictive 40 years before admitting it publicly.
A 1963 internal memo stated: "We are, then, in the business of selling nicotine, an addictive drug."
Tech executives are following this exact script.
Big Tobacco engineered nicotine levels for maximum physical addiction.
Big Tech engineers algorithms for maximum psychological engagement.
Both industries deliberately exploit brain chemistry.
Both prioritize profits over people's wellbeing.
The haunting part?
When U.S. Surgeon General Luther Terry released his landmark report linking cigarettes to lung cancer.
Same urgency, same industry denial.
The parallels become genuinely chilling when you map them out:
In 2023, he issued an advisory linking social media to mental health decline.
In 2024, he called for tobacco-style warning labels on social platforms.
His exact words: "The evidence is clear that social media can have profound risk of harm."
This directly mirrors 1964:
Fix the algorithm or protect engagement.
They choose engagement.
Bury the research.
Keep the addictive features running.
The product changes. The playbook stays exactly the same.
U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy sees it too:
They choose profits.
Launch a massive disinformation campaign.
Target everyone with sophisticated marketing.
Now picture this: It's 2018.
Facebook execs sit in a boardroom, staring at internal research showing their platforms fuel anxiety and depression.
They have two choices:
It's the same script. Same lies. Same oath.
So how did we get here?
Let's rewind to 1953.
Cigarette executives sit in a boardroom, staring at devastating health reports linking smoking to lung cancer.
They have two choices: warn the public or protect profits.
"We certainly do not design the product in that way."
But internal 2021 Meta documents revealed employees writing:
"No one wakes up thinking they want to maximize the number of times they open Instagram that day. But that's exactly what our product teams are trying to do."
In 1994, 7 tobacco CEOs raised their right hands and swore under oath: "I believe that nicotine is not addictive."
Fast forward to 2020.
Mark Zuckerberg, when asked if his products can be addictive, tells Congress:
Your grandchildren will study our current era with horror:
"The Great Digital Addiction of 2010-2035"
We're reliving Big Tobacco's playbook, but this time the addiction is psychological.
And we ALREADY KNOW it's cancerous.
Here's why future generations will judge us harshly:
99% will read this and keep doomscrolling.
*Actually* breaking the cycle requires foolproof systems to keep your dopamine-monkey-mind at bay.
Get them in my free newsletter here ↓ destimulate.com
Fogg himself seems to recognize the monster he unleashed.
He's shifted focus from "persuasive technology" to "positive behavior change."
But the damage is done.
His behavior model is now the foundation of a $8T attention economy that profits from human misery. Good luck!
Harris was so horrified by what they'd created that he left Google to start the Center for Humane Technology.
His life's work is trying to undo what his professor taught him.
"We've created a society where it's more profitable for people to be addicted & distracted," he admits.
Since 2007, teen depression rates jumped 60%.
Anxiety disorders exploded.
Avg. attention spans dropped from 12 seconds to 8 (less than a goldfish)
We're watching an entire generation's cognition collapse in real-time.
Ironically, one of Fogg's own students was Tristan Harris.
3. Motivation amplification:
Likes, hearts, streaks — all engineered to exploit your need for social validation.
The scary thing is, it works exactly as designed. It worked TOO WELL.
The average user now checks their phone 144 times per day.
And the rest was history...
The tactics they learned are now embedded in every major platform:
1. Simplifying behaviors:
Amazon's one-click buying removes all friction between wanting and purchasing.
2. Hot triggers:
Think red notifications designed to hit you at peak vulnerability moments.
Mike Krieger was 1 of his students.
He took Fogg's formula & co-founded Instagram.
Another student, Nir Eyal, wrote "Hooked”…
The book which has now become Silicon Valley's addiction bible.
Literally a step-by-step guide for making products irresistible.
Fogg taught what he calls the "Behavior Model" — a formula that's now hardwired into every app on your phone:
The infamous "B=MAP"
Behavior = Motivation + Ability + Prompt
Basically: give people a reason to act, make it stupidly easy, then trigger them at the perfect moment.
It's Stanford, 1998.
Dr. BJ Fogg launches something called the "Persuasive Technology Lab."
His mission sounds innocent enough: "Use computers to change what people think and do."
But fast forward 25 years...
His students now control your dopamine receptors.
This Stanford professor stole your attention.
He taught students to exploit flaws in human psychology.
They then built Instagram, Facebook's addictive features, and the "Hooked" model that enslaves 5B minds/day.
Meet the man who accidentally birthed the $8T addiction economy:
Every single decision you make is life-altering, down to the smallest movement
To what extent it alters your life, that’s the mystery
