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Emanuel:This week, we're joined by Natasha Schul. Natasha is a professor and anthropologist at New York University. She is also the author of a book called Addiction by Machine Gambling in Las Vegas. This book was published in 2012. I stumbled into it while I was writing about social games and Facebook games, while these were all the rage, and I stumbled into that book in a way that many journalists and researchers who want to study addiction and compulsive behavior that is not associated with drugs, but with technology.
Emanuel:We all end up reading this book by Natasha because it is brilliant. Natasha basically spent years in Las Vegas talking to the people who play slot machines, the people who design slot machines, the people who design casinos, and really laid out the way that technology, specifically our phones, work today and beautifully, expertly described what she calls the zone, which is this area of behavior and brain activity where you're in like this flow state of playing a game that describes a lot of the addiction that I think we all feel today to some degree. Natasha's work is always relevant, but the reason I reached out to her is we've been covering prediction markets more often on fourfour Media, Polymarket and CallSheet, and this is something that she is interested in as well, because it obviously feeds into her research. So was very happy to have her on. Please check out her book if you haven't already.
Emanuel:Again, it's called Addiction by Machine Gambling in Las Vegas. I hope you enjoy our conversation. Natasha, thank you so much for being here.
Natasha:Thank you for having me.
Emanuel:I think it would be very useful for our listeners to hear a little bit about your research into slot machines that you wrote about in your fantastic book, Addiction by Design. There is so much to that book. You go into it in great detail. I highly recommend everyone read it or listen to it. There's also an audiobook.
Emanuel:But to just kind of give an example of how digital user interfaces and design can really change behavior and gambling behavior. Specifically, I was wondering if you can, like, talk about this pivotal moment in Las Vegas and in slot machine design specifically where they changed from physical reels that are spinning in machines to more digital interfaces. What that did for gamblers and what that did for casinos.
Natasha:Right. So when you had the the physical reels or the analog reels, we could think about them as, there was 22 positions per reel. And so you'd have three of them spinning and you were really constrained in terms of the mathematical, outputs or we can think about those as algorithms by these 22 per three real positions. So there was there was really only so much that you could do with that. In the eighties and then even more so in the nineties when we when we saw digital technologies and capabilities and computerization coming on board and being wedded to the slot machine, you saw this explosion of new possibilities for designers, particularly the designers of the math.
Natasha:So each of those reels, even if you continued to see it spinning in front of you, even as it continued to be physical that you were interacting with, was actually virtual with hundreds of stops on them that you could mathematically program to. Most of those virtual stops would be mapped to blank spots on the reel. So they were heavily weighted toward the blank spots. You would see physically in front of you exactly what you saw in front of you on the physical machines. And, you know, if you if you imagine someone sitting for twenty four hours in front of a machine, whether or not you're mathematically competent, you do get some sense of what the odds are by interacting with the symbols that are in front of you.
Natasha:But what digitization did was completely divorce what you see in front of you with what the odds actually are. The easiest way to describe what virtual reels did for physical slot machines is to use the analogy of waiting the dice. So just as you would like drill silver into the corner of a die to weight it more toward one position, you were mapping most of the blank non paying, non winning spots to to the blank spots on the reel. That was like waiting the reels.
Emanuel:Right. And that allows both the casinos or the designers of the machines to better design the outcome for their profit, but also for the enjoyment of the players. Right?
Natasha:Yes. Because you could, you know, if we think about the old one arm bandit, the the limitations that those 22 per times three stops gave you also meant limitations in the kind of experiences that you could have and the kind of time you could spend there. This is why one armed bandits most often did not have seats in front of them. They were very volatile in the sense that you would either double or triple your winnings or you would lose it all. And this would happen pretty quickly.
Natasha:So if you drew it on a graph, it would be very very spiky in terms of your winnings over time and it you would quickly zero out your time. When you had these computerized models that could be manipulated to dispense rewards at at at a at a kind of continuous, pace, but small little tiny rewards over time. You were able to sort of manipulate that graph and, give people much more quote unquote time on device. And this really was a shift from a profit model that had to do with let's get all their money right away. Let's fleece the consumer, and then they can be on their way to let's actually let the consumer sit there much, much, much longer.
Natasha:Let's give them more time for their money, and let's take their money much more slowly because what we see in terms of revenues is that machines that do that ultimately earn much more money from them. So instead of that spiky graph zeroing out in time, you saw a much more slow gradual, gradual line down to zero. And some of these machines that would dispense, you know, tiny tiny little bits over time, were were were so sort of relaxing in the way that they felt to play. One of the one of the designers of them drew it on a napkin for me, and he pointed to that slow curve down to zero. And he said, we want you to recline on our math model the way you recline on a comfortable couch.
Natasha:I guess I do have to say, to to explain how this happens, you you do need to go beyond the three real. So the three real virtual real machine, that was sort of the first step toward computerization and virtuality. What gave even more possibilities and this sort of comfortable couch that you can recline on, that kind of algorithm, that depended on what's called multiline slots. These are the slots that you will still see today in casinos or in online casinos. And, basically, it's a video screen.
Natasha:There are no physical reels. It's a video screen, with many many symbols all over them. And, typically, you can bet on 50, a 100 lines, and you you can bet pennies. Right? So you you you put in your $5 and you're you're betting pennies on each line.
Natasha:Because there are so many lines, you're gonna win back pretty often on at least one or two or three of those lines. And guess what? It's going to say ding ding ding ding, you won on this line, but that's a net loss. So the this idea of, what are called false wins. So slowly taking your money, you're slowly losing.
Natasha:But as you're slowly losing, you're experiencing that as winning every time.
Emanuel:So you do this research in the nineties or early two thousands, and that is long before the ubiquity of social media and mobile games and loot boxes and and all this stuff, but I'm sure anyone who is listening to you immediately recognizes all these incentive models from their day to day lives, these little hits of dopamine. An algorithm that is trying to solicit a certain type of behavior and time on device, a term that technologists use, social media companies use, makers of mobile devices use. And you wrote an introduction, a new introduction to your book in 2024 where you kind of talk about how relevant the book became over time and all these journalists reaching out to you, policymakers, some of the people from these companies that that are actually implementing these type of designs. And it seems like we've come around full circle in a way, like the philosophy was adapted into all these other industries, but now but now they're they're now we're just like back to gambling. And you say you wrote near the end of the introduction, actually, actually, I want to quote this, you mentioned Kalshi at the very end.
Emanuel:Kalshi being the prediction market where, like poly market, people can bet on the outcome of real world events. You say, the convergence of future markets and lay betting is not caused by digital technology. The two were intertwined from the start. Digital technology has, however, made the activity widely accessible to anyone with a mobile device, easy to perform and designed to hold attention. I want to start with that first part.
Emanuel:Can you talk about how future markets in lay betting were always intertwined? Because I thought of it historically, there was like a research aspect to it, and and people actually use, like, experts to bet on real world events in order to get good predictions. What do you mean by that?
Natasha:I'm not a historian, but what I mean by that is that back in the early days of stock markets, which weren't weren't necessarily even called that back in the early days, you saw those activities, activities that today we identify as investing and trading as considered betting. And even even some of the same laws I'm talking about, like, back back in England and this kind of thing. I think to anyone, today, it's sort of absurd that that prediction markets would say that they aren't betting in in some way. I always like to say the absurdism of the claim, that calcium polymarket, etcetera, etcetera are not gambling rests on another absurd claim, which is that there is a big difference between things like day trading and things like gambling. You can go to history to see that link.
Emanuel:And for the second part of that statement, when you talk about how accessible this has become, when you see like a Kevin Hart commercial for a casino app, a slot machine app, or you see commercials on TV for betting apps and prediction markets, what's your reaction there? How do you think machine gamblers that you've talked to or people that you to in in in Vegas at the time that you were researching your book and talking to a lot of gamblers, like, how are they responding and receiving those ads do you think?
Natasha:I imagine that they're sort of appalled and, I mean, it makes what it makes one very cynical, but there really isn't a sort of an ex not only an explosion of gambling, but an explosion of normalized forms of gambling. Even more shocking to me than seeing, the ads by celebrities and others on on on TV are the the the increasing adoption by media of these metrics and sort of referring to prediction markets, as they kinda tell the news. And we've already seen the news take the sports news, especially really taken over by, mobile sports betting. And I think, we're in danger of having, news in general taken over by prediction markets, markets, which is really speaks to this normalization of betting on things.
Emanuel:This is something I wanted to ask you about. I'm not sure how to phrase it, so, like, forgive me as I stumble through this thought, but slot machines is a form of betting that is totally abstract. Like, there's no subject to to the thing that the the bet is is being placed on. You can say the same for most card games, roulette tables. I think even something like the stock market or crypto, they correspond to things in the real world, but the system that you're betting on is so diffused that it's hard to, like, connect a single bet to a single outcome.
Emanuel:And sports betting and things like Cauchy and Polymarket, especially, it's kind of like a one to one. Like, I was looking at Cauchy before this interview, and like some of the bets that I saw is, what will Justin Bieber perform at Coachella on 04/11/2026? Will Meta release Llama five this year? How will Tyson Fury, who is like an MMA fighter, say what will he say during his final press conference? Have you thought about that at all?
Emanuel:Like, what is the impact of betting doing two reality, two real world events if everything is a bet, if we're betting on everything?
Natasha:Yes. I I have been thinking lot about this lately, but in a number of different ways. There are a few different kinds of of of bets that I can see on prediction markets. There are these event contracts that are very linked to specific outcomes like an election or a game. And for those, I think what it does is just taking those two examples.
Natasha:Let's let's take an election as an example. It really changes the way that you orient towards not only the the election, but how how you are a citizen in a way. If if you are, constantly betting on this and checking in to to see what the price is doing, you're sort of orienting to what used to be, a a much more, civic minded, socially oriented decision in this granular, you know, gambling type way. I think that that can change maybe even how we feel about politics, especially when you get to things like attention markets and, you know, how how many times is a politician going to say a certain word or how long will they shake someone's hand. You're not really listening full fully to, what they are saying.
Natasha:You're listening for those little words, and it's like, oh, ding ding ding.
Emanuel:Mhmm.
Natasha:So I think it changes the way that we listen and hear. I think it could also change literally the way we listen to music instead of just listening for what do you like and what do you respond to, what songs. You're kind of vigilant if you if you're engaged in prediction markets. You're you're very vigilant to which song is most likely to be like the the the pick or to rise to the top according to the population. So you're listening differently.
Natasha:You're not listening as a music connoisseur. You're listening as someone who's on prediction markets and has a stake in them. And then in terms of a game, it's it's very similar to to to the the politics in the sense that it changes the way you are a fan. You used to place your bets and then participate in the game supporting one side or the other. But now you have money on the game in all of these fragmented choppy little ways.
Natasha:So you may be watching for tiny things. You may be watching for what a specific player does. You may even bet against your own team because the betting becomes more important than the being a fan. So I really I really think having money on things and gambling, especially in these sort of granular ways, changes so much about who we are and how we are in the world.
Emanuel:Yeah. I I think it is clear from your interviews with machine gamblers that it causes a change in behavior that extends beyond just like the moment of gambling. It's just like your perspective of the world maybe shifts a little bit if you're obsessed with gambling in that way. Something I really liked about the book and something that I think we tried to do in our own reporting is the book is very respectful of gamblers, and you say that you you learned so much about how all of this works from them. And it's very clear that they are very aware of what they're doing.
Emanuel:They're not being fooled. They know the odds. They know how the machines work. You talk to a woman who, like, got a very deep education in how they work and are constructed, and I found that to be fascinating and to be a huge, like, benefit to to to your findings. And then on the other hand, despite all this awareness, gambling addiction has a higher suicide rate than other addictions, and it appears that machine gambling addiction works faster and is more of a problem from an addiction perspective than other forms of gambling.
Emanuel:And I I was wondering how are, like, those seems contradictory, like the self awareness and the lack of control. Like, how do you reconcile that? How are both of those things possible at the same time?
Natasha:I think that, you know, we we sometimes talk about self delusion with addiction in general, but I but I also think we understand and addicts understand, addicts of all kinds. They sort of know themselves and know what's going on. And even if they have that knowledge, even if they've been through the programs, it doesn't mean that they're not gonna be pulled back into it. So I don't I don't know that machine gamblers are, so unique in terms of a spectrum of of addictions in in that. And in terms of how to how to reconcile that, I mean, I don't think it's hard for any of us to understand how knowing that it's time to go to bed and stop scrolling, you know, doesn't doesn't make us stop scrolling and go to bed.
Natasha:And I don't mean to trivialize addiction through that analogy. I just mean that I do believe that these behaviors, that addiction is not something completely other to who we all are. I think we're all on a spectrum somewhere. Right? And I do think that every one of us, it's hard not in the in the contemporary world of digital media.
Natasha:It is hard not to have a glimpse of what gamblers call the machine zone and to understand its hook and its hold. So I think to answer that question, we we just need to, you know, to ask ourselves, what what is that? What when when we know we should be doing one thing, but we're we're doing another? I I don't have the answer. If I had the answer to that question, I'd have it made.
Emanuel:Reporting on technology over the past ten years, there have been instances where, like, with Uber, for example, it feels very much like we're reporting on a company that is running ahead of regulation and that regulation will one day catch up with it. And in many cases, that is what happens. I get that feeling about the betting markets. It feels like it's a new technology. It's a new type of business.
Emanuel:They are making as much money as they can, but eventually, like, another shoe will drop. There's gonna be some horrible story in the news about how this has impacted people, and we'll see regulators come down on these companies. But I feel like I would have had that reaction if I was you kind of reporting on machine gambling in Vegas, and that hasn't happened. Right? Like, the the those are going strong.
Emanuel:They're sophisticated. Do you think that we're going to see regulators intervene here, or is it gonna be more like Vegas where we're gonna let it run wild and just face the consequences?
Natasha:So when you're referring to to to it and the betting markets, you you do mean prediction markets. Right?
Emanuel:Yes. Yes. So call
Natasha:sharing They wouldn't right. They wouldn't call themselves
Emanuel:Sure.
Natasha:Betting markets. And the other reason I asked is because we what we do see and maybe this hints to what could come with prediction markets, we do see an uptick in, legal case suits that are being brought against, mobile sports betting giants like DraftKing and FanDuel sort of following in the footsteps of the these product liability lawsuits that are that are are are being mounted against big tech, like the Meta YouTube outcome that we just saw. So I think just in the past couple of months, there's been two big lawsuits brought brought against DraftKings and and FanDuel taking this approach. And I think that it it isn't it isn't too many steps from that to bringing a saint the same sort of suit against prediction markets. You'd you'd have to modify it slightly.
Natasha:But I think you could sort of show how how certain features, how certain technological affordances are in the the legal presentation defective in that they're they're causing, all sorts of harm and that they should be regulated. In terms of where we're at right now with prediction markets, I mean, we just had the New Jersey ruling, right, where, prediction markets, can can continue on, as as they wish there and not be counted as betting. And I I don't know how long that's that's going to hold. To my mind, it should be and would be so easy in court to make the case that this is gambling and should be regulated as such. Not that gambling has the greatest regulations, but at least at least it's something.
Natasha:But right now, that that's not even happening. So I'm I'm not exactly sure when when it will.
Emanuel:Are you surprised by how prevalent it seems that gambling has become in culture since you published the book? Do you agree with that statement at all that the America feels more like a casino in general?
Natasha:Yeah. I mean, so you mentioned you mentioned that my book was was put out in a new edition with with a preface. And in that preface, I sort of, I narrated the way that my book was kind of taken up as a sort of and the slot machine became this kind of Rosetta Stone or skeleton key for for for unlocking how the hold of so much emerging on the landscape of digital media from Candy Crush to the smartphone and texting, what were some other big ones, to dating apps and, you know, Tinder as a horizontal kind of slot machine. And then Robinhood and fractional shares, like, sort of like multiline slot machines. And now we've landed in this moment when it isn't just diffusing out everywhere into all of our devices and online experiences, but those experiences are increasingly becoming gambling, like actual gambling.
Natasha:So we have this explosion of the the mobile sports betting and the the prediction markets. I did not see that coming. I saw it coming probably a little sooner than others just because I was in touch with what's happening over in The UK where the mobile sports app are few years ahead of us. And so I sort of saw that that what was coming down down the pike. And the reason I keep talking about mobile sports betting is that I think you have to talk about that when you're talking about prediction markets.
Emanuel:Mhmm.
Natasha:Especially now because it's 90% of what's happening on prediction markets is sports betting. I think 90% of the activity on CalSheet. And I'm not sure what it is on poly market, but I think it's almost all of its, US, like, official US business is is sports betting. But you've you've really gotta see those two the those two are very, very similar. And I think that the regulation, the eventual regulation discussion around them would hopefully converge.
Emanuel:Back to the the regulation question, there is regulation in in gambling and there's I actually don't notice, but I'm assuming there's, like, specific rules about slot machines. But you talk about in the book how the makers of slot machines use, like, awareness of gambling addiction as a as a shield almost, like, they are transparent about the odds and that makes it seem above board, but that kind of underplays the reality of, like, why people play, how they play, all the ways that they're pulled in. And just because people know the odds, it seems like transparent and fair to the gambler, even though it can it can cause harm and all all of that. I guess when you say that, like, hopefully, there's going to be some discussion of regulation, do you think that actually, like, curbs the behavior or it just, I don't know, normalizes it?
Natasha:So I I understand your question. I the the kind of regulation that I was talking about or that I would be hopeful for would be a kind of regulation that we we don't see yet with slot machines. Mhmm. And it it would be the kind of regulation that just taking the slot machine example. They say, oh, we you know, slot machines are so regulated.
Natasha:They run on random number generators
Emanuel:Mhmm.
Natasha:And near misses only occur five times more than they would by chance alone, which is kinda and there's a couple of other sort of trivial things. We're so transparent and fair. And and you're right that by focusing on that, they completely obscure what the real problem is, which is the algorithms that are geared toward keeping you in the seat for continuous play until your funds run out and a lot of other, kind of holding design features like that. We can take the example of in social media and the recent trial of things like infinite scroll. Right?
Natasha:The slot machine is a kind of infinite scroll. Right? So should we regulate the infinite scroll? Yes. We should.
Natasha:That's what we should be looking at those kinds of things. And I would hope for the same with mobile sports betting and, prediction markets, both of whom are totally trying to do that move of, oh, look. We're, you know, we're putting up warnings and we're we're putting up labels. I have a Cal sheet account just so that I could go on and see, how these things work. And so I got a little ping a couple of weeks ago It's telling me, cal calci, like, wellness tools or I forget I forget exactly what they're called, but it's a suite of ways in which you can kind of regulate your own self and your time and your your spending.
Natasha:And it's it's a way of sort of if we put that stuff out there, then we are less liable, for all this other stuff we're doing to keep you there.
Emanuel:I imagine, your upcoming book will touch on it. But do you have anything to any thoughts about, like, how you inoculate yourself to these incentives, like being in that environment and researching it all? Do you feel the pull and how do you push back against it or does it just slide up right off of you?
Natasha:I've never really felt the pull of gambling and maybe that's what what allowed me to kind of get so close to it. And it was also what propelled my curiosity because it seemed I really couldn't understand it and what the appeal was and I really wanted to understand. I think that's what gave me momentum with my many many interviews with gamblers over over the years. I've begun to interview some mobile sports bettors, have not yet really talked to anyone, in the prediction market sphere. So I don't consider that I yet have researched that.
Natasha:I'm sort of extrapolating from what I know about slot machines and sports betting apps to prediction markets and what I see when I go on and, kind of play with it myself. I feel like I'm I'm not that at risk there. I am at risk for other kind of tedious little flow clicky tappy activities, which is why it was gratifying when my book was, taken up mostly by journalists as a as a cipher for understanding all of our, you know, our our infinite scrolling, just to put it that way, as as a culture because that I that I relate to. And I always, I think in the back of my mind, had my my own penchant for becoming, sort of disappearing into little repetitive continuous activities, whether it's weeding, you know, what even non digital activities or whether it's like editing, clicking around and editing photos in Photoshop for many, many, many, many, many, many hours. You know, I thought those were just sort of my personal connections, so that's why it was gratifying that others saw a link there.
Emanuel:Yeah. And I guess there isn't anything like inherently inherently harmful about being in the machine zone. Right? Like, you can be it in some innocuous way or some joyful way, or I obviously, I came at your book from the perspective of video games, and when I read the description and like theory of the machines, and I was like, ah, this is like expressing a very base feeling that I have. Maybe you can like do anything too much, but there's nothing inherently wrong with like being in that space, I think.
Natasha:No. I don't don't I don't think so at all. Like, whether it's knitting or gardening, I think, you know, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, the psychologist, has this has popularized this term flow. And, the title of his book flow, the subtitle is, you know, the optimal human condition or something. And, if you look at how he defines flow, every cat every criteria could apply to the to the slot machine or to day trading or or these kinds of things.
Natasha:And so I had to ask myself when I was writing the book, you know, what what is it then that makes the difference between, you know, let's call it good good flow and then flow that is destructive and, depleting. And at the end of the day, I don't think there's that much difference in the biophysiological state itself. I think to understand the difference, we have to, we have to look outside of it to who is is designing the experience, who is profiting from from the experience. That really makes the difference, I think.
Emanuel:This is very tangential to gambling, but I've seen your documentary in college, buffet, and I was such a big fan. It was such a mind blowing documentary. It's a short documentary. It's about buffet culture in Vegas, who's partaking in it, what happens to the food after the fact and all of that. I just kinda, if you don't mind, like a couple of questions about that.
Emanuel:I assume that that is something you became interested in while you were researching your book and just like observing it kind of on the periphery of of casinos. Is that is that how that came about?
Natasha:That is how that came about. I mean, was living in Las Vegas for quite a while and friends would visit and we'd go to the buffets and especially European friends would just be sort of flabbergasted and watching their discomfort and they they just didn't know how to do it. They're like, really? I leave my plates here with foods and I go get more? You know, they just didn't understand it.
Natasha:And I came to see the buffet as this sort of little appendage to the casino that that sort of plays out so much of what's going on, in the casino. And, of course, I couldn't make a film about slot machine gambling easily. You can't bring cameras into casinos, etcetera, but you you totally can bring a camera into the buffet. So I decided I'm just gonna focus there. And it it it relates even though it's food that we're talking about.
Natasha:There's definitely a design element at play there. I spoke to the chefs and others behind the scenes, And they they they very meticulously lay out the food in a certain order and pattern to kind of produce certain behavior in, in the diners. So, you know, it's it's sort of like a culinary example of creating creating an algorithm for a slot machine in a way.
Emanuel:How are they complementary in the sense that, like, if there's something about gambling all day and maybe probably losing money that eating too much at a buffet would be would be a complementary experience to that?
Natasha:So I will answer that question. But first, I'll say what the difference a big part of the difference is. Big part of the difference is that just as with like alcohol, there's only so much food you can eat. You can eat to excess and you like one person in my movie, you can go and vomit and come back and eat more. But there there's a there's a physical limit to how much food you can eat.
Natasha:There is no limit to, the the gambling that you can do as long as you've got credit or currency of some kind to to stay in motion. So that's the real difference. But in terms of the similarity, that might allow me to return to one of your earlier questions that I realized I didn't answer, which was about the the the sort of culture of gambling that that that The US, maybe the world in general, but certainly the The US has become and why what that has to do with and why that might be. I think we I think the answer could sort of explain, the appeal both of buffets and, gambling and probably prediction markets, etcetera. And I think it is a certain the the gamblers that I spoke with, when I when I kinda asked them to talk about their lives and introduce themselves and then make connection between their lives and their histories and the machine zone and the draw that it held for them.
Natasha:They often brought up volatilities and sort of what what the zeitgeist would call precarity, today. Just these precarious circumstances whether it was domestic abuse or losing a job or being from a very poor family or having a child that was very sick and and on and on. And they were they were able to bring those sort of volatile uncontrollable circumstances of their lives directly into conversation with the relief they got, going into that repetitive zone that you find in a slot machine. I think the world today, you know, it's been it's been a few years. It's been, like, twelve, thirteen years since I wrote that book.
Natasha:But certainly where we're where we're at as a society politically, in terms of the climate, in terms of so so many things out there, volatility abounds. And I believe, Mansour, he's he's the CEO of Polymarket, I believe, described the the sort of volatility, in his in his childhood politically as having a lot to do with his conception of of prediction markets. And so it's almost like a gamification of volatility. It's a way to both rehearse volatility, but you're rehearsing it in a more controlled and limited way. So it's almost like it's a way to kind of like short circuit a sense of uncontrollable precarity by acting out that volatility itself, if that makes sense.
Emanuel:That's very well said. Yeah. Think that makes perfect sense. And I think there's also something like, the entire world or this country is becoming more like Las Vegas in the way you just described, where we feel precarity, we feel volatility, and we are somehow, I don't know, role playing that or coping with that by betting and predicting on everything. I think there is probably, I don't know how to exactly identify it or express it, but there's also like a buffet aspect to the culture where we go from like the precarity and the betting, hoping, and then soothing in some way with with food or I don't know, video games or entertainment or just like switching from one extreme to the other.
Emanuel:And I think that's definitely where we are.
Natasha:Binge culture. I mean, we binge.
Emanuel:Yes.
Natasha:We binge watch shows. I think there is a sort of throw caution to the wind and go to this to this extreme in the face of, you know, all this shit.
Emanuel:No. Totally. And and the yeah. Netflix is a buffet. Right?
Emanuel:Like a lot of the a lot of the a lot of the stuff we get served is kind of buffet style. Right? Pick what you want and and gorge yourself.
Natasha:Yeah. And I think that Netflix autoplay was one of was one of the was one of the early sort of like or I think it was called post play originally where it just, you know, so it's like no resolution. You just go into the next one and the next one and the next one. And then it it is it is very soothing. It's sort of like holds the whole world in abeyance, and it keeps everything at bay.
Emanuel:Yeah. Okay, Natasha. Thank you so much for your time. I'm looking forward to your next book. And again, I highly recommend everyone read Addiction by Design if you want to understand a lot of how you feel in the face of of these technologies that that we interface with every day.
Natasha:Thank you so much for having me.
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