Slaves to serotonin

By Gonzalo López Martí – Creative director, etc./LMMiami.com

Distracted from distraction by distraction Filled with fancies and empty of meaning Tumid apathy with no concentration

Excerpt from T. S. Eliot’s “Burnt Norton” (1936).

• Technology finally confirmed what we had suspected all along (especially us cynics in the ad biz): nobody gives a damn about those brainy, carefully fact-checked foreign policy op-eds that appear on the Sunday paper.
• Our newfangled ability to track what people click on on their various devices is one rude awakening: most folks out there seem to have quite corny consumption habits.
• To put it mildly.
• Dancing cats, wardrobe malfunctions, celebrity gossip, the Paul bros, conspiracy theories.
• Are we all just a bunch of dumbf*ck scatterbrains constantly seeking escapism?
• In the case of the conspiracy theories your curmudgeon uncle keeps posting on Facebook, the explanation is “confirmation bias”
• “Confirmation bias” makes us think that we are not wrong, we are not alone, we are not that stupid after all.
• It soothes our anxieties, lowers our guard and calms down our fight or flight instincts.
• But let’s put confirmation bias in the back burner for now: let’s focus on the dancing cat videos and the celeb gossip.
• Don’t feel guilty or ashamed, says science.
• You are, of course, a victim.
• You are just looking for an approval fix.
• Click-bait caters to your weakness for approval.
• Approval makes you feel good.
• We humans just happen to be addicted to an assortment of feel-good substances secreted by various organs in our systems, mostly the neurotransmitter known as serotonin.
• Impulse clicking is an inevitable human trait.
• We just need Mark Zuckerberg to protect us from ourselves.
• Conversely, the folks on the other side, the generators of these industrial amounts of cultural detritus, are victims too.
• They are addicted to being liked, followed, retweeted and fav’d.
• They can’t help it, much less control it.
• We are all looped into a vicious circle.
• Literally.
• We are all suffering from a collective disorder.
• An epidemic.
• Modern science, as we well know by now, is a ginormous edifice constructed to justify our shortcomings, rationalize our narcissism and soothe our brittle emotions.
• When everything is pathologized and regarded as a disease (or condition or disorder, take your pick) it all becomes an amazing opportunity for marketing new products.
• Namely drugs.
• What’s the best slogan of the last 30 years?
• Make America Great Again?
• Close enough but no.
• The award to the best marketing maneuver of the last generation should be awarded to whomever added the adjective “medicinal” to marijuana.
• Bryan Ferry used to sing “Slave to love”.
• Robert Palmer, on a slightly more strident tone, claimed that “You are addicted to love” (the lyrics of the song are a brilliant metaphor of life under the spell of cocaine).
• Now look at the kind of well-intentioned pseudoscience trash that you -and your gullible 14 year-old progeny- can bump into when left to his or her own mobile devices:
• Hacking Into Your Happy Chemicals: Dopamine, Serotonin, Endorphins, & Oxytocin