Literally what my doctor told me. I still got my referral so I didn’t really care

Alternate between both frequently enough so you can’t tell which one is true and blame your unhappiness on your childhood

“Gamification” is the process of engaging people in activity by setting steady, repeatable goals and rewarding engagement with positive audio/visual feedback. Often, we feel unsatisfied when we pursue difficult goals and fail to receive positive feedback (or even get negative feedback) in response to an accomplishment. But there’s also the apathy one develops when steady feedback stimulus isn’t accompanied by periods of relaxation or material benefit.

Historically, you could make the “you’re not being challenged enough” as an answer to someone who was engaged in low-effort activity and low-income leisure. Factory jobs, service-sector grinds, poor schooling, unproductive dating, and the general ennui of feeling like a loser all contribute to this sense of unfulfilled potential.

But we’ve shifted to a more modern “rise-and-grind” style of steady emotional stimulus. The end result has been profiteering off the desire for fulfillment by engaging a young, active audience with emotional confirmation through mass media. You have a steady flow of positive feedback on one end and a nagging negative feedback on the other, constantly prodding you forward by feeding you the fulfillment you naturally desire. But the push-pull of feedback keeps accelerating well past your ability to reach any kind of target. What’s more, the work you put in never seems to come with any serious improvement in social status or material conditions. You’re just getting pestered on one end and pandered to on the other.

You can see this in everything from the Duolingo Owl to the Robinhood trading app to the Amazon Warehouse worker evaluation program. People being goaded to exhaustion feel juiced in the moment but hollowed out by the end.

The difference is between underemployment and overemployment.

eyup.