27/08/2021
Netflix is now ready to exploit our diversive curiosity, the un-productive.
I opened Netflix yesterday and I see a new feature tab named "FAST LAUGHS" showed up. It's the same as what we have in our social media platforms, an easy and fast-to-scroll feed. This would definitely engage users but at the cost of what? Our attention, lazy curiosity.
Curiosity is what brought humankind to the moon. Yet itâs also the force that leaves us wasting half our lives scrolling through our newsfeeds on social media.
Diversive curiosity is little more than a craving for new input, i.e., the desire for more novelty and excitement. On the one hand, itâs what motivates our engagement in a topic in the first place. On the other hand, it can also be impulsive, superficial, and difficult to resist.
Moreover, at its very worst, diversive curiosity becomes aimless, little more than a distraction.
Weâve all succumbed to this kind of curiosity late at night on the web. Clicking on one really interesting-looking link quickly leads to clicking another, and then another. Eventually, we realize that weâve spent the past three hours watching cat videos on YouTube, far past our bedtime.
This is becoming a game for big platforms, really hard to see.
DO NOT GIVE IN, we can't let the platforms exploit us just so it is good for them