David Craig, on January 6th, 2025Monday-Tuesday blog
I’m not really sure about the difference between serotonin and dopamine. Professor Google explains:
“Dopamine and serotonin are molecules that send signals throughout the body; these chemicals affect how we feel. When dopamine is released in our brain, we feel a sense of temporary pleasure. Serotonin, while similar to dopamine, creates a long-lasting feeling of happiness or well-being”.
Though what is clear is that these two molecules drive much of our addiction to the Internet and social media.
Prior to the Internet’s takeover of many of our lives, few people were particularly interested in anything we did or our (usually ignorant) opinions. But the Internet has enabled us to reach hundreds, thousands or even millions with our holiday pictures, scenes from our supposedly ‘interesting’ and ‘exciting’ lives and, of course, our (often wildly-misinformed) opinions.
We get a mild buzz when we read a post or watch a video which confirms what we thought. We can intensify that buzz by ‘liking’ what we see. More buzz comes from commenting on what we see and then an even more intense pleasure comes from seeing others agree with us and liking what we post.
I’m as guilty as anyone. When I write an article for websites such as The Daily Sceptic or The Conservative Woman, I’m constantly revisiting the websites that day to see what people are saying about my article and, being a really sad individual, I can’t resist comparing how many comments my article gets compared to other articles published that day.
Perhaps the greatest serotonin/dopamine rush comes from joining in on a social media pile on. Some idiot posts something like “Trump is a fascist” and this gets hundreds of comments and tens of thousands of likes. Then you join in the assault by writing some complete nonsense like “Farage is a fascist too”. Then you become addicted to revisiting whetever site you posted your ‘wisdom’ on in order to see how many likes and further comments you get, all, of course, agreeing with you as most of us only read posts and watch videos which reflect the views of others who inhabit our opwn echo chamber. Then Godwin’s law, also known as Godwin’s rule of Hitler analogies, inevitably makes its appearance. Godwin’s Law is a statement maintaining that if any online discussion continues long enough, someone will almost certainly compare someone else to Hitler.
But these rushes of pleasure seldom last long. So, many of us spend our lives on our phones, tablets or laptops hunting through the Internet’s social media spinning round in our own echo chambers desperately searching for our next addictive serotonin/dopamine rush.
Category: 
Perhaps we should view the internet and social media as systems created by the controlling elites to make us believe that somebody is listening to our views and as a means to distract us from doing something positive to bring about change. Think of all the carbon emissions we could save if we didn�t need all the energy to run the internet and store the information.
This is true and facebook / tik-tok gives some a sense of value by measuring likes etc.
But many wish to dismiss social media as a waste of time etc. But take a step back and its just part of the process of freely sharing information which started when the books were unchained from the monastery wall so the plebs could learn to read them.
The influence the plebs now have changes everything. Look at the mess politics is in all around the world. Trump used twitter to directly talk to voters and words no longer need to be filtered via establishment press. I think this is huge and a step on the road to direct democracy.
I reflect on what would have happened in WW2 and Britain if social media has been around at the time. Maybe the world would look different now and UK still solvent and a true balance to American power.
I’ve just seen this quote from Carl Sagan:
“One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we�ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We�re no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It�s simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we�ve been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back.”