On Hope

In 2011 Wired ran an article on the psychology of lotteries. It is easy to understand why people buy lottery tickets, they wrote, because of the few minutes of hope make the expense seem worth it. Significantly, almost all lottery tickets are bought by poor people. Hope isn't what sells tickets: hopelessness does. People start buying scratch cards when they see no other possible way to improve their financial situation. Place poor people in a situation where they compare themselves to middle class people and they will purchase more tickets - that's what the article was about, the study from Carnegie Mellon demonstrating that.

So much of the internet runs on hope. I'm not just talking about the "Binary Options Trading" pop-ups, or the "Have Sex Tonight!!!" sidebar ads. Remember the moment in The Social Network where Zuckerberg puts Facebook online - the last change he makes is the addition of "Relationship Status" because people will use the site in the hopes on getting laid. LinkedIn has nothing to offer except hope of a better job. So many sites do nothing except offer the vague (and usually implicit) promise of a better something and it is hope that moves people to use them. Dating sites work how often? There is no mathematical formula for compatibility. I know almost nothing about computers but I do know that. You might as well be picking names out of a hat as use their "scientific" formula. If it works at all it's because people want it to so badly.

The internet has huge sections that are nothing but more advanced versions of the commercials that used to run at 3 am. Hair Club for Men. Get a degree in TV/VCR repair. I got my start at the Institute for... All of it bullshit and all driven by the dream of something better.

I wonder how much of this runs on hope and how much, like lotteries, on hopelessness. People with economic mobility have no need for binary option trading, of making $500 a day filling out surveys. People with social skills have no need for "Hook up with horny housewives!!!" Seeing the internet as a giant machine that feeds on despair is not the image it's promoters (and these days that's everyone) want in your head. I don't even want it in my head but lately that's how I've been seeing it.