instant_internet_gratification (in progress)
I’m currently developing a new project called #Instant_Internet_ Gratification that looks at the ways we seek fulfillment, stimulation, intimacy, and connection online: How do we encounter pleasure on the Internet? Or, are the ways we use the Web more symptomatic of a specific kind of deliberately manufactured late-capitalist new media addiction? To explore this question I’ve been looking at how app and web developers employ a psychology of addiction to incentivize users to keep engaging with their platforms. I’m developing a visual web-language that co-opts the iconography of “likes”, push notifications/alerts, and graphics that are carefully crafted to keep us wanting more and more.
As part of my initial experimentation, I programmed a Google Chrome Extension that replaces every image on any given website with animations of “likes” and “+1”’s, etc., as well as the animations that occur when a player wins in a browser or mobile game. Basically, all of the imagery that makes us feel good when we browse the web, use social media, check our feeds, game online, etc. The extension “makes your everyday browsing experience instantly more gratifying(!©)” as well as makes evident the ways in which the Internet and our devices have been built to perform for us in order to control our behaviour.
The other side of the question #Instant_Internet_ Gratification brings up is how truly gratifying are these Internet acts? Are they essentially empty? How meaningful are these connections we make online? Are the feelings of pleasure we get when someone likes a post real? Or, is this merely a fleeting neuro-chemical response similar to a drug-induced high that we’re hard-wired to keep chasing? Is there a number of followers and likes that would eventually satiate us?