Dopamine sites: the honest case for and against

People sometimes describe this site as a "dopamine site", and they usually mean it kindly. It is a phrase for a certain kind of small web toy: something with satisfying feedback, no real stakes, and a loop you can repeat for as long as you like. Clickers, bubble-wrap simulators, infinite generators, and now apparently a delivery app that delivers nothing.

We are fond of the category and we also think it deserves a harder look than it usually gets, including from us.

What the phrase does and does not mean

First, a caveat we would rather state than skate over: we are not neuroscientists, and the popular use of "dopamine" as a shorthand for pleasure is a lot looser than the actual science. When people say dopamine site, they are describing an experience, not making a claim about brain chemistry. We will use the phrase the way everyone uses it, and try not to dress it up as anything more rigorous.

What people mean is roughly: fast feedback, low cost, obvious progress, and no consequence for stopping. Press a thing, something satisfying happens, repeat if you feel like it.

The honest case for

There is a real argument here, and it is not just "fun is good".

• No stakes is a feature. A great deal of the internet asks you to have an opinion, a performance, or a stance. A toy asks you for nothing.
• Free means free. If nothing is being sold, the loop cannot be tuned to extract money, because there is no money to extract.
• Small pleasures are legitimate. Not every twenty minutes has to be improving. A thing that is mildly delightful and then over is a perfectly good use of a Tuesday.
• Some of them leave something behind. Ours tries to: you can arrive craving something and leave with a recipe you can cook tonight.

The honest case against

And the other side, which we take seriously because we have built the machinery ourselves.

The techniques that make a toy satisfying are exactly the techniques that make a slot machine work: variable rewards, streaks, collections, countdown timers, near-misses. Removing the money does not remove the mechanism. It removes one of the harms.

Streaks are the clearest example. A streak is a genuinely nice way of noticing you have been enjoying something. It is also a small manufactured obligation, and the moment you feel bad about breaking one, the feature has stopped serving you. We have a streak on this site. We are aware of what it is.

There is also the substitution problem. A simulator that is very good at feeling like ordering food is, by definition, quite good at delaying the moment you actually feed yourself. That is a real cost and it lands hardest on exactly the people the site is most appealing to — hungry, tired, low on money, low on energy.

Where we think the line is

We do not have a principled theory. We have a few rules that we apply and that we would happily be held to.

Nothing here should be more fun the longer you stay. The best version of a visit is short. If we ever build something that rewards an hour more than five minutes, we have crossed over.

Nothing should be lost by leaving. No decaying resource, no punishment for a gap, no notification designed to pull you back. There is nothing to lose here except the browser data you can clear yourself.

Nothing should be purchasable. The instant a mechanic exists that money would improve, every design decision after it becomes suspect.

And the exit should point somewhere real. Every dish has a recipe attached because the honest ending to a craving is food, not another order.

What we would say to someone enjoying it

Enjoy it. It is free, it takes nothing from you, and there is no version of this where you have been cleverly extracted from.

But if you notice you are on your ninth imaginary order and you have not eaten since lunch, close the tab and go make eggs. We built the recipe half of this site for precisely that moment, and we would rather be the site you left than the site you stayed on.