Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2019/06/27/forming-callouses.html
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Some nudge better than others, I suppose…we can’t all be the next Oxy.
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this reminds me of the “replying [icon] [icon]” thing in the discourse system
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Nudging noodges.
or " This topic will automatically close in 5 days."
“Must get 2¢ in before the topic closes forever!!!”
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15 people have this in the favorite cart already!
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I can’t wait for the upcoming Amazon Prime day, where time and unit limited deals will be offered in an ongoing cascade all day long - “Act now to save big or loose the opportunity forever!” Don’t wait to buy only the carefully researched items you need, buy what Amazon wants to sell you! Quick, don’t think or you’ll miss out! They are going fast!
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Talk about marketing nudge: Please stop those tricky ads that expand as I’m just about to hit the meat and potatoes of the article. I’m catching on so now I know just to give it a big leaping scroll…
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I’m just wondering, what about new internet users, as people say, age into being old enough to use the internet? If I’m honest I remember falling for some of that stuff (fake download buttons, even some chain mail warnings, things like that etc etc) when I first started messing around with the internet, and I still see people falling for it today mostly yes if they are relatively new to using the internet. But there will always be new people to the internet right…
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Can we have those annoyances include on the adblock lists or maybe have a specific blocker for those anxiety inducing stuff (AnxBlock???)?
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The ones where there is no punishment for not hurrying your purchase. No biggie, I think most people always figured that “2 left!” and “16 other people viewing this” were bullshit.
The countdown timers also are not convincing. Unless those timers are respected.
Ticketmaster for example, you will have to start over with your purchase. I am sure they time out your purchase so that A. People don’t leave a bunch of purchase windows open to game the system and B. In some small way screw you harder. (Like raise ticket prices after a timeout) I haven’t seen B in action yet, but I don’t go to so many shows these days.
I distinctly remember the days when Linkdin used to send me fake requests from my own family members…
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I think that when people analyze these companies “mind controlling” us they forget to look at other things. Like how Candy Crush is fun. Candy Crush is the most popular, but the reason why there are so many Bejeweled-likes isn’t because the gameplay reprograms your brain to be it’s slave, it’s because people like it. If I didn’t have kids I’d play games for three hours a day, and sure I’m more likely to play Dark Souls 2* than Candy Crush right now but I’ve logged plenty of hours of Candy Crush in the past.
Similarly Pokemon Go had a lot going for it. It doesn’t have enough variety to keep my interest over the long haul, but I think more people are playing it because they like Pokemon than are playing it because Niantec is beaming mind control rays at them.
* Best Dark Souls… DERAIL TREAD
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Just use an ad-blocker. 
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3 people have already read this comment!
HURRY! Only 5 days left!!!
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You say that like the two are mutually exclusive. I don’t think they are. The games try to leverage your in-built psychology, while conditioning you in a way that will seek satisfaction through purchases. These games are Skinner boxes. You can like them because they are fun, but the fun is engineered, just like fast food is engineered, to short circuit your rational thought in favor immediate gratification.
That being said, I’m going to go have a cookie marshmallow. Just because I think I know why I do certain things doesn’t mean I don’t do them even knowing that they may be suboptimal for me in the long run.
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Yes, when it comes to games and game monetization, the line between “fun” and “feeds pellets of satisfying reward feelings much faster and with lower effort than other activities” gets blurred pretty quickly. The game, from Dark Souls to Candy Crush, is designed to make you want to keep playing. Whether that’s “fun” or “addiction” depends on the other forces at play. I think it’s usually worth asking yourself in a health check kind of way whether Bejeweled or whatever is truly fun and rewarding for you or if it’s just providing a feeling that’s hard to get elsewhere in your life.
But the ongoing monetization scheme built off of that concept is usually “establish a satisfying dispense rate of reward-feelings, then reduce/halt dispensing unless provided with an infusion of cash.” There’s a variety of ways to do that, from time-gating (“you’ve used your X moves per hour, want to buy more?”) to difficulty curve manipulation (“you failed this level, want to pay to skip it?” or “you came so close to beating this level in the available number of moves, want to buy 3 more moves so you don’t have to start over?”) to outright pay-to-NOT-play (“instead of grinding for that special reward item, want to just buy it?”). Those are absolutely in the same bucket of marketing tricks being discussed.
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But that’s not manufactured scarcity, that’s real scarcity.
Just to clarify, ads are cool.
Tricky ads that LITERALLY nudge the article…
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Click-bait-and-switch? 
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