This writing was copied from my blog https://nope-its-lily.medium.com/. I write about the NOPE and other options and market things there and on my twitter https://twitter.com/nope_its_lily. Cheers!
Check out Part 1 first about my thoughts on the short squeeze thesis. To clarify — I do think shorts are being squeezed in Gamestop, although this is auxiliary to the main driver of the stock’s momentum (and not, in my opinion, the primary driver of Friday’s exponential rise).
So okay, let’s go to the obvious question — if hedge fund tears didn’t cause Gamestop to rocket, what did cause it?
Wew laddy, +71.25% at the peak.
Gamestop in many ways is an extraordinary story, and has all the properties of a successful meme stock (salience):

1. Personal name recognition/Nostalgia-For better or worse, we all know/remember Gamestop (primarily from childhood), which is similarly why Hertez performed so well in the afterlife while Mallinckrodt hasn’t.
2. A hero and a villain — Much like Tesla, Ryan Cohen represents the hero in the Gamestop narrative, where investors can paint whatever picture of the future they want and justify whatever price tag they pay. Similarly, Melvin and Citron (I mean, even the name Melvin) and the hedge fund industry are (perhaps well-deserved) villains in the arc, helping obfuscate feelings of greed or risk by presenting it as a righteous cause.
3. A cataly-ish — For obvious reasons Gamestop is benefiting from the console cycle, but perhaps to a lesser degree than before (its massive real world presence during a pandemic doesn’t help much).
4. Humor-What could be more funny than investing in a relic of the early 2000s? Except maybe investing billions into 3d renderings of hydrogen powered cars.

So it isn’t a surprise Gamestop captivated the attention of the internet; despite common belief, the legend of Gamestop extended far outside wallstreetbets (although the saga of DeepFuckingValue/RoaringKitty there helped bring substantial energy to the cause).
And how does the internet show some love?
Well, it buys calls.
For better or worse, most new investors have absolutely no concept outside of simple long call/put positions (probably for the best, from experience). In general, most new market positions view long options (and, let’s face it, mostly calls) as a highly leveraged bet on the underlying akin to a lotto ticket, which works beautifully for the following reasons:

1. Long options have asymmetric risk-reward, assuming risk-loving participants.

While in prior posts I’ve touched on the expected profit of options being zero, this is only true (it’s never actually true, due to seller’s, variance risk premium, and a host of other factors) under risk-neutral measure. In the real world, investors (especially on indices) tend to be risk-averse (weighting losses more heavily than chance of gain)… at least historically. The new class of retail investors, on the other hand, partly engendered by Robinhood’s extremely gamified UI tends to be risk-loving (“yolos”), favoring chance of gain over (higher) chance of loss.
For that type of an investor, options are akin to a casino due to convexity, or in layman’s terms, “the potential to go up a lot really fast” in value. This is of course true for stocks too (albeit less so, due to the implied leverage of options), but when an individual purchases a stock they have a rather large downside (the entire stock can become worthless). This isn’t the case for a call option, which only represents a portion of the total cost of the stock, but represents the entire upside.
2. Options have to be hedged… often in the underlying.
Before I get 1000 responses telling me this isn’t always true (especially on indices, where you have futures and all sorts of nice things) — it’s more or less true on a meme stock, which basically has no beta or correlation to any other stock (except perhaps other meme stocks). In general, one can anticipate that an option written by a market maker and sold to a retail investor (who owns a long position from that transaction) is hedged in the underlying stock, which obeys the same rules of buying and selling pressure. This is even more apparent in stocks with low float, which tend to move in price substantially with relatively low volume traded. You can imagine how few option contracts it similarly takes (given the implied leverage up to 100 shares worth of delta) to actually move the price (I’ve seen call options move the spot in real time, for instance, on Del Taco stock before earnings).
3. Option buying begets option buying.
What happens when a few individuals buy options on a stock? It moves up slightly (usually in proportion to how many options were bought, what time period they were bought in, and how large the underlying’s float is). This triggers the happy centers in peoples’ brains (yay, we’re making money) and triggers more buying of calls.
More interestingly, option convexity is largely due to the Greek gamma, which simply refers to the rate delta changes in response to changes in the underlying’s spot price. Delta more formally measures how much we expect the option price to change as the spot price changes, but more usefully for this example can represent how many shares equivalent the option contract controls at the given price. This is why delta represents the hedge ratio — if you, for instance, write a 100 delta (ITM) call option and sell it, you need to equivalently own 100 shares of that stock to neutralize your risk.
Delta is interesting (my favorite Greek) because it is heavily non-linear, and changes in response to:

1. Spot price (gamma)
2. Time to expiration of the option (charm)
3. Volatility of the underlying (vanna)

These are all second order derivatives, so you probably are lost by now if you didn’t take calculus at some point.
So why is gamma important here?
Source: quantik.org
Unlike controlling the equivalent delta’s worth of shares, the value of an option contract increases at a faster rate as it gets closer to in-the-money. This is (one of the reasons) why options have convexity — the value of an OTM call option contract goes up faster as it gets closer to ITM, with a potential for (5,10,100,200+)**-**baggers (multiples of how much you paid for the initial) if you play it right.
What’s even more interesting though than gamma alone, however, is pairing it with theta, the decay of an option’s value as the time-to-expiration draws closer. This tends to have a strong relationship to the implied volatility — theta represents the time value of the option (extrinsic), and implied volatility is largely the market consensus of the potential for the underlying to move in the time remaining on the option. However, as the days tick down, the time for that move to actually happen diminishes, and therefore the value of the option similarly goes down with it.
As IV increases, theta usually does (especially on short term options), and vice versa. (Helpful video by the tastytrade crew — https://www.tastytrade.com/shows/market-measures/episodes/theta-and-iv-05-17-2019)
So, given my tendency to ramble, the question is — why is this important? Let’s look at gamma and theta in the context of 0-day-to-expiration (0dte) options, and try to piece together what happened to Gamestop on January 22, 2021.

0 Days to Live

0dte options have long been a mainstay of the dopamine addicted day-trader community (including me, sometimes) given they represent the purest form of lottery ticket:

1. They expire at the end of the day — You don’t need to go to bed and worry about your position, because it’s either closed or worthless.
2. They’re cheap, generally-Theta in particular becomes exponential for 0dte options, and you can quickly buy positions on sale just to gamble as the end of the day grows closer.
3. They still represent implied leverage and have that tasty convexity-Like their more respectable brethren, 0dte options still represent the underlying and have all the neat Greeks (gamma, delta, vanna, pajamas, etc.) which make their payouts non-linear and fun.

In general, the optimal strategy to capitalize on 0dte long options is to buy as late as possible in the day, to allow theta to provide as much leverage to you as cheaply as possible.

Let’s Imagine a Scenario Here

Let’s imagine you have a high implied volatility stock that has been stable/slightly declining in price for multiple days. During that time period, theta is aggressively destroying the value of long options, while IV is similarly dropping (both due to theta and due to relative lack of movement). As we get to the final day (this is a weekly, for example), much of the option’s value has now disappeared.
This impacts both put and calls open, though. And let’s say a mean orange decided to start a war on your stock in the days before, causing a flood of short-term puts to hit the market during that week, which had minimal effect (largely due to continual call buying of longer-dated options coupled with actual shares buying pressure due to belief of a short squeeze/Ryan Cohen being the second coming of Christ).
What happens when those puts start to expire? As the days and then hours tick down, the hedges of those put positions (shorted shares) start to unwind, and buying pressure picks up.
Similarly, this buying pressure is noticed by market participants, who start to capitalize on the momentum by buying 0dte call options. These at first have minimal impact, largely because the inflow and outflow of call delta are roughly equivalent (somewhat of a bias towards inflow, pushing price up alongside share buying).
But towards the middle of the day, two interesting things happen:

1. Theta and charm become more and more prominent in both making new option positions cheaper and unwinding existing put and call positions.
2. Gamma starts to become more dominant due to the high implied leverage versus cost of 0dtes, leading to the virtuous cycle (option buying begets option buying).

These two effects tend to be complementary — as the hedges unwind (given the weekly puts from Citron/the short seller attack) for existing option positions, new 0dte positions can be bought and bought, each time pushing up the underlying as well as increasing the value and delta of other 0dte positions.
This can be neatly observed in the option volume versus open interest for the 1/22 series on GME:
This is fine.
Although more puts traded, the delta (for obvious reasons) of calls is much higher.
As the price of the stock goes higher and higher, this continues to attract more and more speculation, hoping to capitalize on the continued momentum. This continues in a loop:

1. The price of the underlying continues to increase as put hedges unwind, volatility spikes, and call options are bought (the initial delta hedge).
2. The increase in price leads to gamma of existing contracts increasing the delta of those contracts.
3. This leads to more shares being bought to hedge those increasingly higher delta positions.
4. This leads to more speculation and momentum.

An interesting property of $GME from Friday you can neatly observe is the highest strike in the series is $60, meaning that at Friday’s close, every single call option expiring 1/22 expired ITM. More interestingly is the relationship with gamma, again observable below:
Source: quantik.org
As a contract moves further and further ITM (at one point, GME hit $76 intraday), the gamma of the contract decreases as delta hits 100 on the position. This implies a cap on the momentum from the virtuous cycle described above — while continued call buying can of course drive up the price further, not only does the cost become prohibitive (given that a deep-ITM position is basically equivalent to buying 100 shares in payout), it becomes linear (and therefore boring). Once 100 delta is reached, there is no more cycle of increasing spot price causing increasing share buying, only normal share buying.
And that’s when it drops.
It’s hard to say whether the halt caused the drop (given the mental association halts have to pump and dumps for most investors). In this case the drop assuredly coincided with the halt, but more importantly, we can observe where the drop ended:
​
57.99 is such a pretty number.
In this case, we can observe the drop in price stabilized at $58, before rapidly jumping above $60. This is largely due to gamma and continued 0dte call buying buttressing the fall — as the positions fell farther OTM, shares used to hedge those positions are sold off, further driving the price down (in this scenario, the dealers are almost assuredly short gamma). However, similarly those positions-now closeOTM and close to expiry-become cheaper at a fairly exponential rate (due to theta and charm).
Speculators again gain conviction, pushing the price up above the highest strike (to the point where gamma provides no real extra push versus the clock ticking down).
This is what we call a gamma squeeze, and isn’t a terribly uncommon phenomenon. It largely follows similar patterns:

1. In general, gamma squeezes tend to happen closer to OPEX, due to both hedge unwinding (in the case of a previous put skew, for instance) and due to the 0dte effects mentioned.
2. In general, there is both a rapid rise (due to gamma looping and speculators joining) with a similarly steep cliff (especially if the available strikes is exhausted, like what happened to $GME).

Can it be continued forever, though?

In general, the answer unfortunately is yes.
Gamma squeezes in generally power meme stocks, and require a few elements to be true:

1. Continued supply of strikes and promise of convexity — Put gamma squeezes rarely happen because well, the maximum value of a put option occurs when the underlying hits 0. Calls, however, have an infinite potential payoff and strikes similarly can be added indefinitely. This allows continued creation of OTM options, which due to cheap premium and asymmetric risk-reward on longs power the gamma squeeze.
2. Continued momentum-In general, meme stocks follow the greater fool theory, despite promise of rocket emojis. When they drop, they drop hard.

​
Oopsies.
This is because, as previously mentioned, meme stocks are powered by long calls sold by market makers, who are chronically short gamma. Any selling begets more selling. Even periods of quiescence are dangerous, because without continued inflow of call delta, hedges unwind, and the selling pressure begins.

1. Continued attention-This is where salience shines. The major reason Tesla (the OG gamma squeeze) continued to rocket throughout 2020 was largely due to Elon Musk’s charisma and Tesla’s promise of a better world. It becomes a lot easier to stomach risk for an investor when following a strong personality with a killer story. This role was largely played in Gamestop’s saga by Ryan Cohen, and fed into (potentially unwittingly) by the battle with Citron and the mystique of DeepFuckingValue. It remains, however, to be seen if this will continue.

The moral of the story here is retail, for better or for worse, finally learned how to weaponize options. We’ll see what happens next.

We’ve all been there ourselves or seen someone guilty of this sin: Sloth; the friend who won’t move off the sofa, eyes wide open not wanting to miss another YouTube clickbait video telling themselves ‘just one more’, or worse, watching countless hours of self-improvement yet not taking action but feeling a sense of Pride.
As human beings, we’re made for movement. Our muscles, heart, bones and brain all need to be exercised to stay in good shape. We’re lucky on this journey as we have so much pent up energy to exert, we are almost forced to workout the body and mind. I don’t need to tell you the benefits of exercise, cardio and resistant training in particular as they have been mentioned time and time again.
All sorts of creatures commonly opt for whichever course of action minimises the amount of effort required of them, us included. Interestingly, we tend to gain more pleasure when we’ve had to put in more, rather than less effort to earn a given reward. This may be why the benefits sometimes feel that much better. It’s the ultimate game of self-discipline, to tame the beast within.
In Buddhism, the Sanskrit dictionary translates kausidya as sloth or indolence. It is seen as one of the 5 obstacles to meditation and the religion warns against the temptation to give in to the lure of extended periods of unproductive inertia. The Islamic equivalent is kasal. Muslims are expected to pray 5 times per day and fast during Ramadan surely eradicating the human tendency towards perpetual laziness.
However, Sloth does not have to be seen through the vail of a purely physical form. Shirking our work, family and community duties is our modern day anti-social temptation. It’s been said here a thousand times but it rings true; we’re not everything we could be and we know it! That's why we're here.
In a study where people with Parkinson’s disease were given dopamine-boosting drugs to a target area of the brain (the ‘striatum’ which I will get to shortly) impacting the movement triggering pathways, other areas were raised unintentionally which actually increased the patient’s motivation to engage in promiscuous activity even turning a minority of these older patients into sex pests! BUT, it was these powerful compulsions to get up and do something that was the major difference whether it be gambling or an expensive shopping spree.
The part of the brain called the ’striatum’ mentioned earlier reinforces important behaviours and (e.g. finding food) is vital for initiating movements; but if one was to have a stroke, this brain area loses it’s blood supply and the consequence is apathy, a lack of motivation. Depending on which part of the striatum is affected, the result is two-fold: Emotional-affective deficit: the person concerned lacks a strong urge to do one thing after another. Cognitive deficit: leaving the person unable to figure out how to carry out the desired action.
A little bit of laziness is a good thing don’t get me wrong. We need an occasional rest from the breakneck speed of modern life and those that don’t suffer from burnout and stress. One role of cortisol which we have mentioned in ’Gluttony’ is to supress the immune system until this stress has been dealt with. When it isn’t dealt with, the body shuts down making us feel weak, pathetic and can possibly persuade us to find that ‘release’ from this burden.
In ’Pride’ I mentioned neuroplasticity in which brain circuits that are used regularly and intensively over long periods of time are strengthened and reinforced. BUT, the brain circuitry that is used infrequently or not very intensely actually falls into despair. Applying this principal to the striatum, it could be that these brain circuits of motivation become less able to generate ‘get-up-and-go’ in people who haven’t used them regularly and intensely. This is a very dangerous trap for us. Pursuing dopamine spiking behaviours so frequently (I was guilty of this like many of you) allows the striatum to reorganise itself to make acquiring that particular action the primary motivation over and above everything else. This is how an addiction becomes apparent whether it be social media, gambling, drugs or our particular vice…
I could write another post on the addictive tendencies of the gaming industry and social media but that’s for another time. Perhaps an 8th and worst sin of them all…
Accusations of Sloth should be reserved for those who freely choose to fritter away their spare time and energy on frivolous distractions. Whilst on SR we have unique gift of excess energy and according to the principals of neuroplasticity, the longer we retain, the more we’re literally changing our brain circuitry.
Do not turn a blind eye to your moral obligations; pick up the burdened responsibility of all that is Life and strive towards a meaningful future.
Best.

Hi there,
Have been doing NoFap since 2016. My first streak was about 265 days, which is a pretty big accomplishment. Recently also had a streak of 100 days. But I'm quite disappointed I relapsed recently, and not just once, three times in the last week. The difficult thing I have experienced quitting porn, is that it has always stayed wired in my brain. I started at an early age, and didn't know it was harmful, since all my friends were talking about it as well. I am currently 28 and my life has improved dramatically since I discovered porn is actually harmful. My life progressed in so many aspects.
However, the addiction never went away, I still can't endure triggers too much. During the time I was single and not dating a lot, I occasionally tried to fap without p*rn (since that would be healthy like once every month). But eventually I will always get so many triggers to eventually relapse to porn once.
Now I have a girl I am seeing on regular basis, but even though I am not fapping right now, the Sex also triggers me to fall back into p*rn. My recent relapse was just days after I had normal healthy sex.
It seems it will always be a weak spot in my brain. I'm grateful I am healthy and a better person after understanding the risks of p*rn, and at least I am not addicted to drugs or alcohol. But man, it's quite sad to realize that normal fapping (without porn and fantasy) and normal healthy sex, are major triggers for me, even though it's normal and healthy.
So what I can recommend to people new into NoFap, especially on your first reboot of 3 months, don't have much normal sex too, since it can trigger p*rn usage. My longest streaks were always hardmode, where I didn't have any sex or fap, and those streaks went really well because of it.
Also other factors that increase dopamine seem to trigger me. If I eat too much sugar, play videogames, gambling, netflix, instagram, too much screen usage, too much coffee, they all contribute in higher dopamine and that on itself triggers relapse as well. Not as strong as sex or fapping, but it does sometimes contribute.

Some notes I wrote based on a few interviews I’ve recently listened to. Originally I wrote them for myself but decided to post it here:
First and Foremost, the usual shit.
Ensure that you get adequate, regular sleep, ideally at consistent times each day. During nighttime hours, unless you have a good reason not to. Wake up with natural sunlight if possible. If you wake up within an hour of your alarm don’t go back to sleep. Just because you’re tired when you wake doesn’t necessarily mean you haven’t had enough sleep.
Eat a fairly balanced, healthy diet. Schedule your meals for roughly similar times each day because your digestive system is closely connected to your circadian rhythm. Determine your base calorie requirements and adjust your food intake accordingly. I say fairly because I don’t believe it’s worth being too obsessive over, to the detriment of other areas. It’s also not recommended to follow any of the fad diets, eat during the night, or skip breakfast, but that’s your prerogative.
Ensure sufficient hydration. There’s all sorts of apocrypha about exactly how much water we should intake - but a good yardstick is to drink enough that your urine has only a light yellow tinge.
Regularly engage in moderately intense exercise. This hold numerous benefits to this, and it’s also a microcosm for demonstrating the reality of goal setting, hard work and incremental achievement.
Identify and gradually divorce from any highly addictive habits that you feel are undermining your life. Substances such as drugs, nicotine alcohol, and destructive activities such as gambling are most obvious, but this certainly also includes excessive internet and social media usage, which is insidious in the modern context. Addiction throws ones reward system into disarray and virtually precludes the forging of positive neural circuits that reward constructive behaviour as it becomes (temporarily) desensitised to the comparatively lower amounts of dopamine produced from other (more constructive) activities. Trade short term pleasure with medium to longterm pain for short term discomfort with medium to longterm fulfilment.
If you’re not at least attempting all of this than you’re simply not attempting to operate at your maximal mental and physical efficiency.
Vitamin D and regular socialising have also been found to maximise natural serotonin levels. Meditation and certain breathing techniques can also help to moderate stress.
Once those biological preconditions have been met you’ll be primed to optimise your neurology.
Set reasonable goals. This is an intrinsic process but one method to help delineate goals is to define what one doesn’t want to have happen to them - a hypothetical future that they wish to avoid - and to build their goals from that perspective. Also important to note that goals are mutable and should not be held as the ultimate test of ones success because that would mean ignoring all the intricacies of the process, which truly is the essence of life. Humans are engineered to find most fulfilment in the struggle not the victory, so ensure that you always have something(s) to be striving toward. Goals that involve self sacrifice and contribution are biologically hardwired to be deeply fulfilling so that’s something else worth considering.
Embrace challenge. Admittedly a buzz phrase these days but more recent studies have corroborate that this action actually reinforces positive neural circuits that will predispose you to embracing future challenges. This has been obvious empirically a long time, but the neurological science now supports it - with a study on mice demonstrating how a mouse that was typically timid could learn to become more bold and ambitious on a neurological level if they were literally forced to undertake lab challenges and compete with other mice. Conversely, avoiding challenges reinforces avoidant circuits which in our context is responsible for lowered levels of self belief and negative self talk - and also lowered objective skills and abilities because you never allow yourself to develop them.
Expect to feel resistance upon starting (particularly difficult or time consuming) tasks. This is natural release of cortisol which manifests in an unpleasant stress response but if you continue to keep yourself visually and physically focused on the task at hand then you will soon enough experience a flow like state of heightened focus in most instances - as new evidence indicates that your eyes lead your minds focus. The only time staring into space is helpful is for creative thinking or when you’re attempting to relax.
Attach a serious sense of urgency to tasks but don’t panic. This is a critical balance for allowing the mind to enter a heightened state of calm arousal in which acetylcholine is aiding our focus but we’re not being inhibited by excess amounts of cortisol and norepinephrine - basically it sets the stage for neuroplasticity to occur - which will help us to reinforce new (positive) neural pathways and assist with gentle learning.
Force yourself to take strategic breaks every hour or so (even if you feel like it’s disruptive) and focus your eyes on distances and/or physically move around for a while to allow you to decompress and re enter a focus state with more tenacity. Studies also infer that If we’ve been sitting in the same spot and/or doing the same task for hours on end we actually end up dramatically overestimating our productivity and so breaks are crucial for helping us reset and recharge. Additionally use this opportunity to briefly check social media or do any smaller non work related activities during these breaks so you’re not compelled to do so whilst completing other tasks.
Most importantly, genuinely acknowledge and commend your attainment of sub goals or items on your to do list - whilst devaluing the outcome. The process is everything, the outcome is just a bonus and doesn’t always reflect the input. This approach helps to precipitate periodic dopamine releases which suppressed norepinephrine (the neurotransmitter responsible for causing us to quit once it reaches a certain threshold) and in turn serves as more motivation and energy, and is therefore self perpetuating. This ability to incrementally self reward was identified as the main factor in allowing people to achieve extreme feats such as passing the notorious NAVY seals training.
Do not expect your anxiety and fear to disappear. Thats not the aim. In fact, that’s also a useful indication that you value whatever you’re intending to do (be it an exam, a job interview or a date etc) - but trust that the ability to act in spite of such feelings becomes habituated as you build fortitude through strengthening the positive circuits. In that sense it does become easier for all intents and purposes.
Of course outcomes are still relevant, and society tends to judge you based on external outcomes not internal processes since that’s all it can measure, plus it’s ok to be disappointed in yourself. Despite what the self-help literature implies, nobody actually enjoys failure, but don’t dwell on it. That’s useless. Instead...
Interpret failure, criticism and negative feedback as an assessment of your performance, not of your capability and not of you as a person. Even if the feedback seems vitriolic and highly personal in nature, extract anything of value and use that to help illuminate genuine areas for improvement. Also take this opportunity to consider whether your goals and expectations were actually realistic, and be sure to acknowledge your progress toward them.
Over time and application, this mindset will inevitably result in progress - however slow or minor it may seem - that will inch you toward your goals.
Of the growth mindset itself; understand that shifts in your mindset are gradual and incremental, like the steps toward attaining any other goals. Many expect to wake up tomorrow as a new person. A productivity supersoldier. A long held eidolon of themselves that has managed to completely overcome negative thoughts and behaviours, destructive habits and procrastination. That’s just never ever going to happen. And eventually the prospect of facing such a radical shift becomes so daunting that it will cause you to delay starting the process of self improvement altogether. So If you feel as though the time is never quite right to start - completely reframe that, because In fact there has never been a better time to start. So start right now, start small, and eventually try to apply these techniques to your daily life as much as possible. Acknowledge the benefits, but do not be disgusted or disheartened when you occasionally find yourself resorting to familiar ways.
Think of this growth mindset as being a life encompassing goal - one which you can never fully attain (since we’re animals not machines) but one which will transform your life as you pursue it.
————————-
Edit: I was short on time when I converted my notes into paragraphs earlier so I’ve just fixed up some errors and elaborated on some points.
Also note that I myself don’t currently abide by all of these guidelines, but I am and will be increasingly attempting to.
Edit 2: The main source of this advice was Dr Andrew Hubermans interviews which are available on YouTube. I’m sure he doesn’t stick to it 100% himself either but that’s because we’re only human.
Edit 3: For what it’s worth, I added a final paragraph on the mindset itself since I’ve personally struggled with self help literature for that very reason.

Edit: I didn't write this, just copying it here to save it
Who this guide is for: Heavy tech users who worry that their digital habits might be interfering with their happiness, productivity, creativity and motivation. What’s in it: A few years of intense self-experimentation condensed to nine principles. This isn’t everything you need — not even close — but it’s a start. Reposted in its entirety from Homescreen Zero, a blog about improving life with healthy digital habits. There's a PDF available on the blog if you want this guide to go. It seems like every other post on here is about too much Facebook/vidya/Reddit, so I really hope this is helpful.
Introduction
Maybe you’ve had the experience recently of sitting down and trying to read a book, and finding your mind start to… wander. Maybe you’re having trouble focusing at work or school, sitting through movies, or even TV shows. There’s a little itch there. “This is cool, I guess… but what’s happening on the internet?” Or maybe you’re just more anxious these days. Depressed. Cynical. In a “The World Is Shit” rut. You’re thinking about all those IDIOTS out there who are ruining the planet for the rest of us. The Nazi/Fascist/Islamist/Patriarchy/Feminist/WhitePrivilege complex. Here’s what’s going on: years of heavy internet use have (literally) reprogrammed your brain. Your smartphone, your laptop your social media accounts, your streaming sites, your inbox and your favorite blogs are all working together to hijack your brain’s natural reward system. On a daily basis, you hit the brain with a barrage of chronic overstimulation that it simply isn’t adapted for. This is why it’s harder than ever to focus, to chill out, to make it through a meeting or dinner or bathroom break without stealing a glance at your phone. Your brain craves moremoreMORE. The reprogramming of your reward system is hampering your motivation and creativity. It’s stressing you out and hurting your social life. It’s decreasing your academic or career performance. It’s turning you into a smartphone-addicted zombie. And it’s convincing you that the online virtual reality world is necessary to feel human. The good news: it’s all programming, which means you can counter-program. This guide will show you how. Ready? Let’s dive in…
Monkey brains pressing dopamine buttons
The reason it’s hard to have a healthy relationship with digital media is because our monkey brains see it as a low-cost way to trigger happy feelings. Aside from fear, pleasure is the most important behavioral motivator. Pleasure is administered via the brain’s reward center, which releases feel-good neurotransmitters (such as dopamine) when we do things that have historically been linked with survival. Here are just a few of the things that trigger dopamine:
Social interaction
Sex
Punishing those perceived to “have it coming”
Novelty and the unexpected
Humor
Information intake
Winning arguments/being right
Unlike in nature, when all of these things are tightly correlated with survival, the artificial reality layer of the internet can present them in rapid sequence to be consumed endlessly from behind the safety of the screen. The internet, smartphones, your favorite blog, your inbox, your Instagram account — your monkey brain just sees these as big, shiny dopamine buttons. Press the button, get the hit. Repeat. This wouldn’t be much of a problem, except the brain is malleable—highly malleable. Sustained exposure to stimuli programs the brain to expect and value certain things. What you expose your brain to cultivates patterns within it. With respect to the internet, the programming cultivates (among other things):
Mindlessness. A need to avoid the present moment and escape into the on-screen world, which is associated with safety and comfort.
Scattered thinking. An inability to set priorities and focus on what’s important.
Ego and insecurity. When more validation comes from externalities (one’s social media profile or online rep), it’s impossible to develop real self-esteem. People struggle with neurosis and self-loathing.
Diminished motivation. When your reward system is tuned to expect easy rewards from vicarious onscreen pleasures, why pursue difficult, messy real-world achievements?
Increased anxiety. Animals are meant to handle regular stress from stressors that they can react to, like predators. But stress systems are compromised, badly, by a diet of world-is-ending-and-you’re-powerless news.
Meanness and cynicism. People get used to indulging their inner child online, ranting and complaining, and it leaks into their real life.
The good news is that, just as you programmed your brain, you can reprogram it. You can create a healthier relationship with digital that will make it easy for you to:
Think clearly
Be more productive and creative
Be kinder to yourself and to others
Introduce more stillness and contemplation into your life
Reduce anxiety and cynicism
Or, more simply: You can move from a state of perpetual scatteredness to a state of calm, clear thinking. The rest of this guide is all about how we do that.
Finding your sweet spot
Digital isn’t like cigarettes. You quit cigarettes. You don’t worry about “creating a healthy relationship” with your Marlboros. Digital is like food. We have to eat. (I guess you don’t have to use digital, but going full Amish is neither realistic nor preferable for the majority of humanity). Within that obligation, however, is a vast spectrum. We can call it the “utility/fun” spectrum. On one end, pure utility. The stuff that nourishes. Raw veggies, lean protein, eggs and tuna. Quinoa and lentils. On the other end is fun. Chili fries and movie theater popcorn. Red velvet cupcakes. Dark chocolate and red wine. What are we looking for? The sweet spot — mostly healthy, but with a few sensible indulgences. You probably can’t eat chili fries every day and maintain optimal health. You probably can enjoy a few if you’ve been eating well and working out. Certainly, a life with red wine and chocolate and a slice of birthday cake every once in a while is more fun than a life without. Our relationship with digital is very similar. On the utility side, there’s work emails and Youtube videos about proper leaf raking techniques. On the fun side, there’s BuzzFeed quizzes and snarky Tweets and porn. Your goal: figure out a “sweet spot” between utility and fun that allows you to lead an excellent, productive life while enjoying fun stuff online. But this is much easier said than done. To get to the sweet spot, you’ll need to take a REALLY GOOD LOOK at your own digital habits. You’ll have to cultivate the inner honesty to recognize what is and isn’t working. And you’ll have to commit to making real change. Sound good? Let’s jump in.
Counter-programming: 9 major principles
These are the nine major principles of counter-programming your brain. Follow these rules and you’ll dramatically increase the health of your digital habits — not to mention your overall quality of life. These have all been tested by me. They work. Put them to work for you, and watch your happiness and performance jump.
Principle 1: Be purposeful about digital.
The programming: Turn to a screen whenever you need something. Anxious? Upset? Lonely? Bored? The screen has what you need. Paw at the screen like it’s a slot machine. Trigger those hits of dopamine. Relish your superiority. It’s fine to take a spin on the hamster wheel of impulse gratification every once in a while. Where it kills you is when it becomes a way of life. When your every waking moment is filled with Instagram binges, and little tappy games, and refreshing your news apps, and texting friends, then — that’s where your dreams die. The counter-programming: Be intentional when using your digital devices. Ask: “Why am I doing this? What am I hoping to accomplish here? What’s my goal?” Your digital devices are tools to be used purposefully, not slot machines to be slapped over and over for your amusement. Remember the utility/fun spectrum? Intentionality is what lets you dip into “fun” without making it a way of life. When you purposefully decide to pull up Instagram or Facebook for a bit of social media doodling, it’s very different from compulsively pulling it up because you’re uncomfortable, or bored, or scared. You stay in control; you call the shots. Cut back on your aimless browsing. Way back. Don’t treat digital like a cheap way to fill dead air with mindless clicking. This is like eating out of boredom. Use digital when you need to, and put it down when you don’t. Reintroduce friction. Denature the “whip-out-the-phone” impulse. When you aren’t using your phone, put it away—in a bag or on a stand on a table across the room. When you aren’t using your laptop, close it and put it in a drawer. Create separation. Oh, and… SLOW DOWN. Don’t whip out your phone like you’re going to resuscitate someone with it. Try thoughtfully stopping… opening your bag… removing your phone… mindfully using it… putting it back. It sounds silly, but these are precisely the kinds of tweaks that train your mind to be more spacious and calm.
Principle 2: Displace digital from its central role in your life.
The programming: Look at your phone. Look at your TV. Look at your computer. Answer this message. Respond to this prompt. Look here. Look here. Look here. In the attention economy, your time and headspace are more valuable than ever — which has spawned a massive ecosystem of profit-driven companies who compete for it. Unguarded, you’ll find yourself doing their bidding — clicking, tapping and swiping as life goes by. The counter-programming: Instead of treating life as an undifferentiated blur — an endless series of screens from which you very occasionally look up and go “Huh?”—strive to make a clean break between your (purposeful) digital time and your everything-else, real-life time. I try to look at my phone sparingly, when I need to. I don’t use the screen to fill time, or as a safety blanket for when I’m uncomfortable. When I come home, I put it on a little stand on the table by the door. I’ll look at my inputs (email, texts, Slack etc.) regularly, but only to make sure nothing needs my immediate attention. On my schedule, I’ll go through my inputs and zero them out. But I take pains not to flit from one thing to another like a butterfly. And I never look at my phone when I’m out and about. I cringe when I catch myself text-walking. If I need to use my phone, I stop, take it out, use it, and then move on with my life. Relocate digital from the center of your universe to a tertiary planet that you occasionally drop in on. Your quality of life will go up considerably.
Principle 3: Cut out junk-food content.
The programing: The high appeal of digital “junk food”:
Endlessly novel
Highly stimulating
Fast refresh (always something new)
Gleefully immature (Think fluff subReddits, Twitter, 4chan etc.)
Accessible everywhere, on demand
But like real junk food, too much of this completely ruins your diet. You’re conditioned to crave it more and more. You equate it with substance. As Marcus Aurelius wrote, “Your soul takes on the color of your thoughts.” Do you really want your thoughts to be like Twitter or Buzzfeed — endlessly sarcastic, relentlessly bitchy? Or do you want to think, act and behave like a human being? The counter-programming: You are what you eat. This is as true for content as it is for food. Tier your information diet into “Never,” “Sometimes” and "Always." Never: The stuff that is never, ever good. Complete junk, and liable to trigger a breakdown. For example, Twitter is on my no-fly list. Twitter is like 99% complaining. Every time I go, I find myself stumbling out of a rabbit hole several hours later. Frustrated, angry, and wondering where the day went. It’s useless to me. My Never list also includes: Virtually all news sites, blogs that are cruel/snarky/gossipy, political stuff. Sometimes: Sensible indulgences. Use this as a reward. Did you get up early and write? Great, enjoy some Netflix in the afternoon. Are you in the middle of a productive study session? Cool, take a ten-minute Instagram break. There are no hard-and-fast rules; you know when you’ve earned some fluff. My Sometimes list also includes: Reddit (motivational/positive subreddits ONLY), Facebook, the New York Times. Intelligently written blogs. Entrepreneurs, motivational and health content. Always: BOOKS. Read books. Not only do books train your mind to monotask on information, they're a decent screen for quality. Not every book is great and not every quality idea becomes a book, but writing a book is hard, and the standards are comparatively high, so ideas tend to be better thought out and researched. Read: philosophy, self-development, history/business/biography, quality fiction. And keep a few entertaining books around, too, like fantasy/thriller shit — perfect for winding down at the end of the day with. Get a Kindle — mine changed my life. When you feel the need to look at a screen, look at your ebook of The Meditations instead of Instagram. You’ll find there are people and blogs that are consistently good. Get on their mailing list and read their stuff when it comes out. Reward quality with attention. Don’t reward pandering. Remember: Out of sight, out of mind. Unsubscribe from negative subreddits; use Social Fixer to block unpleasant keywords/domains from your Facebook feed. Use URL blocker to block Twitter. Also remember: Triviality is suffocating. Does it really matter who did what at the Emmys last night? Does it matter that Twitter had THIS to say? Does it matter that some jackass in some other part of the world went online and said something stupid? If you want to think big, apply your mind to big things, over which you have some level of influence. Don’t scatter your thoughts among a million insubstantial flecks.
Principle 4: Stop multitasking.
The programming: Rapidly flick from one screen to the next. Notifications popping up to tell you about everything, all the time. Answer emails while walking to the coffee shop. Check your social media during the lecture. It all feels super-productive, but multi-tasking crushes productivity, increases frustrating, and saps your energies. A day spent multitasking is a day wasted. A life spent multitasking is fractious and ineffectual. The counter-programming: Reacquaint yourself with the joys of deep focus on your work, and presence with your current state of mind. Continuous multi-tasking programs your brain to go shallow. To do awesome shit, we want to go deep. Before you begin each day, have your priorities clearly in mind. Write them out if you need. Decide on what you’re going to do. Better yet, schedule time to do it — like it’s an appointment on your calendar. Make and keep this appointment with yourself. When it comes time to work, configure your environment for actual working. Disable notifications for all but the most critical, time-sensitive things on your laptop and smartphone. Keep your phone on silent. Close unneeded tabs. Put on some chill, non-distracting music (This Youtube channel is a personal favorite). Use a focus/break technique, such as Pomodoro intervals, to motivate yourself. And go do it. When you’re out in the world, resist the temptation to “multitask through life.” I’m not going to say it’s beneficial (or realistic) to NEVER look at your phone, but for God’s sake, not when you’re walking around or talking to a friend. Be present with what you’re doing.
Principle 5: Replace social media with real social interactions.
The programming: A live, always-on feed of social information from friends, family, colleagues, former dormmates, someone you met at a party once… Show off your cool life and celebrate the coolness of others. Never mind the reality — that we’re all sitting around inside looking at everyone else having fun. Never mind that even when we do “make it,” when we get the cool car or gourmet meal, we’re still posting it online, enslaved to the opinions of strangers. The human mind is hard-wired to be social, and social media offers only a simulacra that will endlessly entice but never satisfy. The counter-programming: Engage in frequent, extended social bonding with flesh-and-blood human beings. Sit across from them at the table. Navigate awkward silences. Talk. Explore. Share a meal. Call up old friends or acquaintances and go to coffee to catch up. Ask strangers out. Go out to visit a friend and just BE with them. Don’t worry about documenting it for your feed. Taper your social media use. Try to go on it less. If you’re a hardcore user, limit session time. You can use self-discipline or any number of apps that time and reduce phone usage. If you’re a light social media user, consider going on a break or discontinuing usage. I personally maintain a Facebook and Reddit account but have shut down everything else, and it feels great. Yeah, I miss out on some stuff — but I conserve headspace for other things that I place more value on. It’s all about priorities.
Principle 6: No porn.
The programming: Indulge your hedonistic desires to your heart’s content. It’s normal, healthy and free. Except… It’s not normal. The monkey brain wasn’t made for the world of on-demand, high-def, infinite-variety porn that can be delivered straight into the eye sockets of anybody with a working internet connection. Porn, like compulsive gambling and spree shopping, is an extreme example of the brain’s reward system being highjacked by an exaggerated version of a naturally healthy stimulus. Just as the gambler needs to keep pulling that lever to get their dopamine fix, so do porn addicts learn to blunt themselves into docile submissiveness with their habit. Porn usage has been clinically linked to changes in brain plasticity that mirror drug addiction. It’s tied to desensitization (a numbed response to pleasure), sensitization (powerful cravings for more), hypofrontality (weakened impulse resistance) and dysfunctional stress circuits (increased use of porn to manage stress). It’s also worth adding that the industry exploits young women, arguments about “empowerment” notwithstanding. The counter-programming: This one’s easy. Stop watching porn. If the idea of giving up porn fills you with dread, then congratulations — now you know for certain that it’s a problem. There is no reason that a healthy and well-adjusted person should need to watch porn. None. Imagination was good enough for billions of our ancestors, and it will be fine for you. Better yet — focus on intimacy with your special someone, or work on meeting that special someone. Visit /nofap or /noporn. There can be some crazy mumbo-jumbo on there, but the underlying principles/motivation are solid.
Principle 7: Screen-free mornings and evenings.
The programming: Keep your phone by your bedside. Wake up, check your inbox and Twitter and Instagram before you get up. (Associate your smartphone with safety and warmth). Look at a screen until the moment you pass out. Wake up and do it again. The counter-programming: It is critical to have a morning and evening routine that omit screen time. The first and last hours of your day should be low activity and screen-free. Honor your body’s natural wake/sleep cycles. I can’t overemphasize how critical this is. (There are only a few exceptions. You can look at a Kindle if you prefer to read eBooks. And if you have a really good reason to be looking at a screen — like, you’re writing a novel and your writing time is 5-7am — go for it. But cut it out with the aimless browsing.) Mornings are a foundation, a time to wake your mind up and ease it into the day. Choose reading, journaling, quiet reflection, stretching. Gradually ramp up the activity level. I get up around 6, but don’t look at a screen before 8. The nighttime is a time to wind down and prepare for sleep. Stop using stimulating digital (video games, social media etc.) with a couple of hours to go before bed. The last hour before bed should consist of reading and relaxation. It goes without saying, but your phone and computer don’t belong in your bedroom. If your smartphone is your alarm clock, cool — get one on Amazon for $7. (Better yet, get the Philips wakeup clock — worth every penny IMO).
Principle 8: Align values with behavior online
The programming: Act one way in person, but let your inner child run loose online. Bully people, complain endlessly, pick fights with strangers, leave nasty comments. What’s the harm? It’s not you. “On the internet, no one knows you’re a dog.” Oh wait, it IS you. You ARE the person you act like online. When you complain online, your real-life experience sours. When you obsess over doom-and-gloom news stories, your worldview darkens considerably. And when you’re mean and juvenile and nasty to perfect strangers, you’ll find your thoughts becoming sharper about the real-life people that you love. The counter-programming: You aspire (hopefully) to be a kind, generous, emotionally stable, pragmatic, thoughtful, intelligent, purposeful and motivated person. So act like it. Don’t fill the web with cruelty, snide judgements, self-deprecation and immaturity. Letting your inner child run free is dangerous business, especially in this era where online and real-life identities are thoroughly merged. Regard your public face on the web like your public face in real life. Of course, nobody's perfect. Hell, you could go through MY reddit/social media history and find some unsavory stuff. It's not about being perfect, it's about recognizing when you stray and getting back on the path. There are no points for winning fights against anonymous strangers. Yes, they disagree with you. Yes, they’re horribly ignorant and stupid and wrong. So what? You’re not going to convince them over the internet. You’ll just give them what they really want: a reaction. So don’t do it. BE POSITIVE. Don’t ever complain online. It’s pointless and narcissistic. Nobody cares about your complaints nearly as much as you do. Yes, I know that when you’re swelling up with righteous outrage, it feels really good to scream it to the world, but please — save it. Mom was right: say nice things or don’t say ‘em at all.
Principle 9: Cultivate real excellence.
The programming: Get the highest score, the most Likes, the celebrity re-tweet, the followers, the upvotes… Treasure them. These are signs of your value and worth. The counter-programming: Life is short. We all die, but death isn’t the scary part. It’s the long, slow decline beforehand. Your health, hopes and dreams will probably fade before your mind and body do. In order to meet the decline without regret, we owe it to ourselves to work on ourselves. We should aspire towards excellence. Not impossible excellence — superhuman beauty or effortless riches — but real excellence. An enjoyable, productive life filled with good experiences and good people, free of unnecessary suffering, beholden to no one. When asked if we’re happy, we should be able to say “Yes” without a moment’s hesitation. Digital can support our path to excellence, but it can no more provide excellence than a paycheck or nice car or big house in the suburbs can. (Think of how many enraged mediocrities there are with well-paying jobs and great cars). Digital can’t make us kinder, or more mindful, or appreciate a sunset any more. It subtracts more than it adds. Aspiring to real excellence gives you a path, the path of self-improvements. There’s a purpose, and a joy, to working on yourself — to watching your mindfulness and health and fitness and career flourish over time. It’s not fast, and it’s not easy, but it’s the real deal. The specifics of how to get there are beyond the scope of this article, but it’s all the usual suspects. Eat well — mostly unprocessed, whole foods. Minimize drinking, sugar and processed food. Guard your sleep like a jealous lover. Work out at an appropriate intensity. Move around — lots of long walks. The point is to do. The doing is the thing. The decline is coming. Fill it with happy memories. The rest will take care of itself.
Wrapping Up
The most important piece of this puzzle is your commitment to change. If you’ve made it this far, I think we can safely assume you’re at least part-way interested. So, congrats! Now, make it real. If you create a healthy relationship with digital it will change your life. I know this for a fact because it changed mine. I have reached a level of relative peace and happiness in my life that I genuinely never thought possible. Certainly, it didn’t seem reachable when I was an stimulus-addicted information-overloaded smartphone monkey.

This essay on Darkest Dungeon contains no spoilers.
Darkest Dungeon is a Lovecraftian roleplaying game released by Red Hook Studios in 2016, and as an indie game with over 2 million sales across its different platforms, it’s hard to call it anything short of a success. But it is perhaps most notable on the Internet for its difficulty, its dark tone, and its stress mechanic. When the creators set out to build the game they knew it would need to reflect the theme of psychological degradation which is core to the genre, but they wanted to go beyond mere “insanity” as it’s often reduced to in this sort of media, and instead present a more realistic portrait of the nature of stress and how it affects the human psyche. So, thesis time: I argue that Darkest Dungeon’s portrayal of mental health struggles is not without flaws, but is nonetheless appropriate on most fronts. Its mechanics build an effective model of how humans react to stress, as does its narrative, which is typically expressed through the mechanics. The places where Darkest Dungeon does stumble in its portrayal are where its mechanical and narrative elements clash.
Now, the overall argument Darkest Dungeon makes about humans positions itself less optimistically than the high fantasy outlook typical to roguelike RPGs, but still more optimistic than the crushing hopelessness of other Lovecraftian media. This latter fact may be due to sheer necessity of the medium; lack of meaningful agency is a core theme of Lovecraftian works, but video games must by definition feature high levels of agency. The result is that Darkest Dungeon doesn’t portray its characters as psychologically-invincible heroes, but still as heroes nonetheless.
It represents this through its stress mechanic. In addition to a healthbar, characters possess a stress meter, which can be filled by certain enemy attacks, the deaths of other party members, interaction with certain objects in levels, and even just passively increasing over time during exploration. Once stress reaches 100, a character typically receives one from a list of afflictions, which impart various debuffs, cause the character to defy the player’s commands, and cause further stress to other members of the party. However, occasionally the result of reaching this stress level will be one from a list of virtues, which instead buff the character. The game even keeps track of which afflictions a character has had in the past, and makes them more likely to experience those afflictions in the future, representing them being prone to these particular behaviors when under extreme stress. Stress can be reduced through a number of methods, such as landing critical hits on enemies, which seem to be symbolic of the mentally-healthy feeling of accomplishing a task successfully, as well as abilities used by other characters during rest periods and activities in the hamlet between campaigns. All of this is an accurate reflection of mental health struggles. We all have breaking points past which the worse sides of ourselves can come to surface, and we typically become less effective in the pursuit of our goals as a result, though sometimes we can find real success in functioning under pressure. Or sometimes a terrible experience can even help us grow and find a sort of inner strength. Stress is depicted as being able to be assisted by inspiring successes that give us a sense of self-worth and meaningful agency, and by the encouragement and support of friends. The fact that all characters are capable of at least two different abilities that encourage others, one which decreases current stress levels and one which decreases susceptibility to receiving new stress during the quest, represents an argument the game makes through its mechanics, that the support of others who share your struggle is one of the most effective and accessible ways to find acceptance, relief, and even recovery. Stress can also be relieved by certain activities in the hamlet, though some of those activities are of questionable status as to whether they're helpful in real life or not, such as self-flagellation, or if they're mere escapism that fails to help one properly process mental health issues or cope with actual stress. The gambling hall might be an example of that. These are some of the smaller issues the game’s representation has, though in a way they’re fitting to the tone of the game. It’s even possible for characters to become addicted to gambling, the same for drinking, which reflects the sort of tone the game is going for, that characters exposed to Lovecraftian horror and the general stresses of dungeon-crawling may wind up so mentally scarred that they have to lose themselves in addictive vices.
So on the whole, the way Darkest Dungeon depicts people struggling with mental health has mixed messages, and part of that is surely due to the fact that Darkest Dungeon isn’t actively trying to be a comprehensive or politically-correct model of human psychology, or even a scientifically-correct model, just to make some general arguments through its procedural rhetoric. Now if we look past the surface level of the stress mechanic and look more at the story the game is telling, both on the level of individual quests and the game as a whole, the game makes a clear case that people dealing with mental health issues can still be highly capable. Little bits of character speech within the game reveal character backstories that are marked by exile from a community, or which are otherwise wracked with trauma or guilt. Single-page comics released by the makers of the game make these more explicit, even as their wordless nature still leaves some degree of ambiguity. The Crusader is still haunted by guilt for leaving behind his family to fight in the holy war. The Vestal seems to have been exiled from her order for being distracted from sacred duties due to overpowering sexual fantasies, and she keeps trying to repress that sexuality as shown by some quotes in the game. The Arbalest appears to be an orphan from her father being hunted down for some unknown cause, and her being shunted out to survive herself with just a crossbow as protection. It’s possible it was a racial lynching, given that they’re the only canonical people of colour we’ve been shown in the setting, which reflects the trauma that often begets families impacted by societal racism. The most explicit is the Abomination, who was the victim of experimentation and torture by an eldritch cult, which ultimately made him the beast he is now. All of the player characters are people with internal struggles and continued bearers of fast misfortune that they often seem to regress to while afflicted, saying things alluding to what they’ve gone through, even seeming to re-experience it. And yet despite these tragic backstories and the occasional cracking under the stress of adventuring, the heroes of Darkest Dungeon remain useful, powerful, and valuable. Themes of mental trauma, altered mental processes and disillusionment abound in the game, and while they often cause emotional trouble for their bearers, rarely is this presented as something that makes them less valuable as people.
However, I put an emphasis on “rarely” to indicate that it is still present. One can nitpick how there should be more causes of stress; it’s hard to argue that reading a disturbing passage from a book causes more stress than an axe cleave to the chest. These can be seen as mechanical concessions, but not all problems are so easily ignored. For starters, there is an important aspect in which characters with mental health struggles are actively excluded, with the player choosing to do so. This emerges from a conflict between the narrative and the mechanics. Characters acquire quirks over the course of their adventures, and ones based in mental health quirks or broader neurodivergence are typically debuffs on a character. The typical solution for them doesn't involve their own agency, as most would agree people suffering from debilitating conditions should typically have, but instead involves you as the player strapping these characters into the sanitarium until the undesirable trait is forcibly beaten out of them. This is of course a reflection of how the mentally ill were often treated in the gothic Victorian period that the game takes most of its aesthetic inspiration from, but it’s never challenged within the game. It could have been presented as a grim and unfortunate necessity in a pursuit for which any available means must be used, but even this degree of challenge goes unmade in the narrative.
As Ian Bogost writes in The Rhetoric of Video Games, some games “use procedurality to make claims about the cultural, social, or material aspects of human experience. Some do this deliberately, while others do it inadvertently.” In his NYU Games Center speech he addresses the idea of games as making their arguments independent of creators’ intent, and I think that in the case of Darkest Dungeon, this deprival of agency was not intended on the part of the creators, as evidenced by its positive treatment on the other side, from its character backstories and how many quirks characters can receive are actively good traits that assist them during adventures or during recovery from other stress. Artifacts exist separate from their creators, and especially in video games where players have a great deal of agency, it’s easy for the game to unintentionally make procedural arguments when it comes to which strategies and activities are optimal to use. Deprival of agency from such characters has problematic overtones, but it could be seen as necessary in a medium centered on player agency. Darkest Dungeon makes the Lovecraftian trope of the loss of meaningful agency a central aspect to its narrative feel, and the question remains about the extent to which taking agency from characters in a theme-specific and genre-specific context, without being explicitly critical of them, can remain an ethical portrayal.
Perhaps the worst devaluement of those with mental health struggles lies in the early game, when it's very expensive to treat people's stress. In these cases it's often more to your benefit to just fire them, send them away, physically battered and mentally broken by their grueling missions, than it is to actually take care of them and aid in their recovery. Now, part of the game's theme is that Lovecraftian sense of individual people as tiny and meaningless in the face of a dark universe, and that has deeply interesting effects on the game, such as your experience that matches something in-character, of starting to see the characters at your disposal not as people but as resources, tools to be used towards your own ends. It feels really fitting, like your "character" comes to see people in that dehumanized light, mirroring your Ancestor’s shift in mindset as he descended into the obsession that ultimately caused the mess you’re working to undo. But as Anita Sarkeesian stresses in several of her Feminist Frequency videos, it is both possible (and even necessary) to simultaneously enjoy media while also being critical of its more problematic or pernicious aspects. We can enjoy the games we play while also being critical of their representation, and not allow negative portrayals to unjustly impact our real attitudes towards marginalized groups. It’s doubtful that most players will be singlehandedly convinced by Darkest Dungeon’s procedural arguments that the best way to deal with people’s mental issues or phobias is to force them into a mental asylum, but it nonetheless can contribute to a culture which disregards the agency of people with such conditions. Darkest Dungeon has an aesthetic which is absolutely worth enjoying, and the mechanical decisions the creators made resulted in a game which is deeply immersive and impactful on its audience, but this has come at the cost of depicting people with long-term disabilities or struggles that will take a lot of investment to get over as just not being worth it. As the narrator says: "Another soul battered and broken, cast aside like a spent torch."
These problems come from a tension between narrative and mechanics. The mechanical action of forcibly fixing someone’s mental issues or casting them aside if they’re not deemed to be worth it is a clash against Darkest Dungeon’s larger motif of flawed people showing agency, power and heroism in circumstances that push them to their limits. To restate my thesis: Darkest Dungeon’s portrayal of mental health struggles is not without flaws, but it is nonetheless appropriate on most fronts. Its mechanics build an effective model of how humans react to stress, as does its narrative, which is typically expressed through the mechanics. The places where Darkest Dungeon does stumble in its portrayal are where its mechanical and narrative elements clash.
Now I’m largely apologetic for the game in this piece because I tend to place more importance on the intended thematic, seeing problematic aspects as largely accidental (though obviously that doesn’t simply make the problems go away) or as uncomfortable baggage that accompanies a genre from the get-go and which is expected to be overturned gradually, rather than by singular indie games in one fell swoop. But these issues in the game matter because of its enduring popularity, which may increase even further. Darkest Dungeon 2 is on its way, set to release during 2021 with a larger production team, and this is a chance for its creators to bring greater harmony between the game’s mechanics, tone and narrative. Red Hook Studios has an opportunity to bring more agency to characters marked by abandonment, PTSD, the hardships of dungeon-crawling, and existentially-horrifying revelations at their own insignificance. Perhaps we are mere hunks of flesh, living in an uncaring universe with meaningless fates, but maybe, even despite our mental health struggles, we can take control of our futile destiny.
Good afternoon, DarkestDungeon! This assignment is worth 25% of our final grade, and I’m pretty happy with how it turned out. Thought I’d share it with you guys—though I haven’t played it in a long time, Darkest Dungeon is my single favourite video game and it sparked an interest in Lovecraftian horror I didn’t even know I had beforehand. (I read a bunch of Gothic horror as well before going for Lovecraft, to set myself up with proper context. Frankenstein is worth reading even if you’re not normally a reader, I’m amazed by how good Shelley’s prose is despite being over 200 years old. Dracula, on the other hand, is one of VERY few books I can say I actively regret reading due to opportunity cost.)
Some quick points:

• It doesn’t have any spoilers; feel free to read if you’re not done the game yet. Despite the first line it’s not actually an essay, but a script I read out loud, recorded and sent in. Don’t get on me for not citing my sources using proper APA format. Or do if you really want to, I get a brief dopamine rush from Reddit notifications anyway.
  
• I’m a bit more critical of Darkest Dungeon in this piece than how I actually feel about the subject in real life, which is probably why I cram so much apologeticism into this. It’s poor form in Game Studies to just go off about how great in every way your favourite video game happens to be in whatever regard you’re writing about, especially regarding social justice topics like this.
  
• I run with my own interpretations of the character backstory comics. Your mileage may vary.
  
• ANITA SARKEESIAN REEEE—Yeah yeah, I know she’s the sworn enemy of all true epic gamers. We had to reference a minimum number of assigned course readings and ground our analysis in them. There wasn’t much to choose from on the topic of mental health specifically. Nothing, in fact. One of the options was a Feminist Frequency video. I picked it because it was one of the easiest to incorporate. (Also, whatever you may think about her game critiques, she's not wrong on the point I cite her about: it is good to be critical of the media you consume.)
  
• Particular bit I’m interested in hearing your thoughts about: to what extent is it desirable/viable for characters in a game to have agency independent of the player? I think Darkest Dungeon is particularly interesting to look at from this angle due to how afflictions give characters that are normally directly under your control their own agency, and in the process often screw over your tactics. Control is taken away from the player, which is somewhat antithetical to common design knowledge in a medium which has audience agency as its main differentiating trait, but Darkest Dungeon does it quite effectively. I mostly make the whole “DD2 has the opportunity to give more agency to its mentally-struggling characters, u guys better do it >:(” point because it sounds nice rhetorically and like I’m showing the ability to be critical. Had to do that to harvest marks from whichever unfortunate TA has to grade it, but I’m not quite as hardline as that in practice.
  
• God I love this game. Can’t even get myself to do new playthroughs of it or anything though because the ending was just so impactful on me. Felt so final. Don’t even know if I’ll play the sequel because it’s gambling with my feelings.
  

If you enjoyed reading this, feel free to check out my fantasy/sci-fi writing project at Yaldev. It's got weaponized cyborgs, undead dinosaurs, sentient paper airplanes, Horse Meat, lots of pretty art, and overall a mild dose of grimdark in the narrative (c’mon you play Darkest Dungeon I know you want that sweet sweet grimdark).
As the title says, feel free to post comments and discussion! I should be around to provide responses of questionable value.

Hey everyone,
(this is not a paid promotion)
I've come across an interesting little project called Bundles Finance ($bund). I bought in at 192,000 market cap for a quick flip, but as I learned about it I decided I like it even more, and am looking for more opinions on it. It's currently sitting at a 1.2 mil cap and no one really knows about it yet.
Bund is an innovative way to earn rewards via staking. Is it like every other defi staking platform you've come across 100 times this year? No, not exactly (touching on this below the pasted article information). The creator, Simon Lewis, is extremely into human behavior. Bund was created with the intention to keep peoples attention spans, while also not consistently injecting new coins into the Bund economy. There's currently a circulating supply of 72,000, 97,000 max, and the devs 10,000 tokens have been locked for a year (November 2021), with a few thousand other tokens set aside for marketing (which is starting) and community incentives. Here's a quick snippet from one of their Medium articles touching upon the two topics I just discussed briefly:
" THE PSYCHOLOGY BEHIND OUR PLATFORM AND WHY YOU SHOULD JOIN THE BUNDLES COMMUNITY.
Have you ever entered a trade on Uniswap or another exchange without any real conviction but simply because you wanted to feel ‘something’? Do you check your Blockfolio several times an hour? This is all to do with reward and the spikes in dopamine we receive upon the outcome of our portfolio value. Interestingly, the resulting performance (a profit or a loss) matters less than the actual anticipation of the outcome.
It is well known that social media platforms use psychological techniques to influence the time spent on a platform and several crypto projects are subconsciously using these techniques, but I believe we will be the first to use them to maintain relevance and usability in a very fickle space. We will follow up in the next 48 hours with a more detailed article on the psychology behind our platform but we incorporate:

• Leaderboards to facilitate social interaction, community, social belonging and motivation.
• Variable rewards
• Real time data on your performance and the ability to check easily
• A ‘Hall of Fame’ to create reward on a neural level
• A simple web platform with which to interact

TOKENOMICS
Many staking projects suffer from an ever increasing supply of tokens which ultimately rapidly decreases the price of a token. Many investors are caught out by looking at a market cap based on circulating supply and not realising that this supply will rapidly increase over a short period of time. This has caused large losses for initial supporters in projects such as $SUSHI and $STRONG.
At Bundles, we are creating an innovative staking platform that allows token holders to potentially earn high levels of APY (if they outperform the average prediction bundle) yet the token supply remains the same.
Total supply 100,000 $BUND
Private Sale 15,000 $BUND (already completed at 0.002 ETH per $BUND and released upon completion of the presale)
Presale 55,000 $BUND (0.003 ETH per $BUND)
Airdrop 5,000 $BUND (released 7 days after Uniswap listing) ANNOUNCEMENT ON HOW TO RECEIVE THE AIRDROP 20th OCTOBER
Team tokens 10,000 $BUND
Marketing tokens 5,000 $BUND (we have some great marketing ideas!)
Uniswap Liquidity 10,000 $BUND (LOCKED LIQUIDITY)
The Presale will be a fixed swap sale on bounce.finance and will be launching before the end of October.
Following the completion of the presale, we will list the token on Uniswap within 24 hours. The initial listing price will be 0.005 ETH per $BUND.
Initial Market Cap of 425 ETH ($158,525 on current ETH price)"
​
Their platform is launching tomorrow. So, how does it work? Users stake their desired amount of $bund and choose a "bundle" of assets they think will perform well over the next week. You can currently choose from BTC, ETH, XRP, UNI, LINK, DOT, USDT, BNB, YFI and CORE, (but they will let the community vote on new tokens and how many pools there should be), and then you wait a week to see how well your asset bundle performs. The point is to choose a bundle you think performs great during the next week.
Now, once the contest is over users are rewarded based on how they did. There are 9 tiers with different rewards:
Top 10% of predictions +3.6% (4% minus 10% Developer fee)
10–20% +2.7% (3% minus 10% Developer fee)
20–30% +1.8% (2% minus 10% Developer fee)
30–40% +0.9% (1% minus 10% Developer fee)
40–60% NEUTRAL
60–70% -1%
70–80% -2%
80–90% -3%
90–100% -4%
​
Some positive points:
So if you're in the top 10% you get a reward of 3.6% from the bottom tier (people who lost bundles). This is where I think it's so interesting - using a contest for staking. It's like DFS but for Crypto, and this is why I think it will get huge (plus they're going to add other use cases for the platform).
The team is known (Simon Lewis & Sid Bouziane) and are constantly interacting with/updating the community.
The community is growing FAST. Organically we have gone from (when I joined) 170 holders to 375, and like 800 in the TG to 1400.
The owners started Elevate Health in 2018 and got VC funding from it. Simon's background is in financial broking.
Successfully audited by Solidity.
Platform releasing tomorrow.
The largest holder of Bund is the same address that's the largest holder of K3pr which is leading to theories that it may be Andre Cronje or a friend of his.
The top 10 wallets (whales) got in under $1. We have been over $15 twice now and touched $22 and they still haven't sold, which leads me to believe they think this is going much, much higher, and will probably be involved in the staking contests.
​
If you're interested in checking this out here's their Twitter: http://twitter.com/BundlesFinance
This links their Telegram (where all the action is). And you can find a bunch of posts on their Medium account.
​
I'm hoping to hear some feedback from you people. Its gone to 1.2 mil cap without any marketing and their site not out yet (tomorrow), plus it's not on CMC or CG yet. This is a super unknown project. They have two AMAs ready to go by Wednesday and one is in a TG group with over 20,000 people. I saw on their etherscan that they've sent out 10 transaction from their financial account, so they have at least 10 amas/influencers lined up for marketing to begin.
​
I personally think this will get huge because of the gamification aspect. People love to gamble. Whales will love the contests as a way for them to earn with their TA. It makes Crypto exciting while earning and I think it will spread like fire once the Twitter big dogs find out about the platform and how it works.
Anyway, let me know what you guys think of it. I'm stoked on the idea, but would love to get some input.

Hey everyone,
I've come across an interesting little project called Bundles Finance ($bund). I bought in at 192,000 market cap for a quick flip, but as I learned about it I decided I like it even more, and am looking for more opinions on it. It's currently sitting at a 1.2 mil cap and no one really knows about it yet.
Bund is an innovative way to earn rewards via staking. Is it like every other defi staking platform you've come across 100 times this year? No, not exactly (touching on this below the pasted article information). The creator, Simon Lewis, is extremely into human behavior. Bund was created with the intention to keep peoples attention spans, while also not consistently injecting new coins into the Bund economy. There's currently a circulating supply of 72,000, 97,000 max, and the devs 10,000 tokens have been locked for a year (November 2021), with a few thousand other tokens set aside for marketing (which is starting) and community incentives. Here's a quick snippet from one of their Medium articles touching upon the two topics I just discussed briefly:
" THE PSYCHOLOGY BEHIND OUR PLATFORM AND WHY YOU SHOULD JOIN THE BUNDLES COMMUNITY.
Have you ever entered a trade on Uniswap or another exchange without any real conviction but simply because you wanted to feel ‘something’? Do you check your Blockfolio several times an hour? This is all to do with reward and the spikes in dopamine we receive upon the outcome of our portfolio value. Interestingly, the resulting performance (a profit or a loss) matters less than the actual anticipation of the outcome.
It is well known that social media platforms use psychological techniques to influence the time spent on a platform and several crypto projects are subconsciously using these techniques, but I believe we will be the first to use them to maintain relevance and usability in a very fickle space. We will follow up in the next 48 hours with a more detailed article on the psychology behind our platform but we incorporate:

• Leaderboards to facilitate social interaction, community, social belonging and motivation.
• Variable rewards
• Real time data on your performance and the ability to check easily
• A ‘Hall of Fame’ to create reward on a neural level
• A simple web platform with which to interact

TOKENOMICS
Many staking projects suffer from an ever increasing supply of tokens which ultimately rapidly decreases the price of a token. Many investors are caught out by looking at a market cap based on circulating supply and not realising that this supply will rapidly increase over a short period of time. This has caused large losses for initial supporters in projects such as $SUSHI and $STRONG.
At Bundles, we are creating an innovative staking platform that allows token holders to potentially earn high levels of APY (if they outperform the average prediction bundle) yet the token supply remains the same.
Total supply 100,000 $BUND
Private Sale 15,000 $BUND (already completed at 0.002 ETH per $BUND and released upon completion of the presale)
Presale 55,000 $BUND (0.003 ETH per $BUND)
Airdrop 5,000 $BUND (released 7 days after Uniswap listing) ANNOUNCEMENT ON HOW TO RECEIVE THE AIRDROP 20th OCTOBER
Team tokens 10,000 $BUND
Marketing tokens 5,000 $BUND (we have some great marketing ideas!)
Uniswap Liquidity 10,000 $BUND (LOCKED LIQUIDITY)
The Presale will be a fixed swap sale on bounce.finance and will be launching before the end of October.
Following the completion of the presale, we will list the token on Uniswap within 24 hours. The initial listing price will be 0.005 ETH per $BUND.
Initial Market Cap of 425 ETH ($158,525 on current ETH price)"
Their platform is launching tomorrow. So, how does it work? Users stake their desired amount of $bund and choose a "bundle" of assets they think will perform well over the next week. You can currently choose from BTC, ETH, XRP, UNI, LINK, DOT, USDT, BNB, YFI and CORE, (but they will let the community vote on new tokens and how many pools there should be), and then you wait a week to see how well your asset bundle performs. The point is to choose a bundle you think performs great during the next week.
Now, once the contest is over users are rewarded based on how they did. There are 9 tiers with different rewards:
Top 10% of predictions +3.6% (4% minus 10% Developer fee)
10–20% +2.7% (3% minus 10% Developer fee)
20–30% +1.8% (2% minus 10% Developer fee)
30–40% +0.9% (1% minus 10% Developer fee)
40–60% NEUTRAL
60–70% -1%
70–80% -2%
80–90% -3%
90–100% -4%
So if you're in the top 10% you get a reward of 3.6% from the bottom tier (people who lost bundles). This is where I think it's so interesting - using a contest for staking. It's like DFS but for Crypto, and this is why I think it will get huge (plus they're going to add other use cases for the platform).
Some positive points:
The team is known (Simon Lewis & Sid Bouziane) and are constantly interacting with/updating the community.
The community is growing FAST. Organically we have gone from (when I joined) 170 holders to 375, and like 800 in the TG to 1400.
The owners started Elevate Health in 2018 and got VC funding from it. Simon's background is in financial broking.
Successfully audited by Solidity.
Platform releasing tomorrow.
The largest holder of Bund is the same address that's the largest holder of K3pr which is leading to theories that it may be Andre Cronje or a friend of his.
The top 10 wallets (whales) got in under $1. We have been over $15 twice now and touched $22 and they still haven't sold, which leads me to believe they think this is going much, much higher, and will probably be involved in the staking contests.
If you're interested in checking this out here's their Twitter: http://twitter.com/BundlesFinance
This links their Telegram (where all the action is). And you can find a bunch of posts on their Medium account.
I'm hoping to hear some feedback from you people. Its gone to 1.2 mil cap without any marketing and their site not out yet (tomorrow), plus it's not on CMC or CG yet. This is a super unknown project. They have two AMAs ready to go by Wednesday and one is in a TG group with over 20,000 people. I saw on their etherscan that they've sent out 10 transaction from their financial account, so they have at least 10 amas/influencers lined up for marketing to begin.
I personally think this will get huge because of the gamification aspect. People love to gamble. Whales will love the contests as a way for them to earn with their TA. It makes Crypto exciting while earning and I think it will spread like fire once the Twitter big dogs find out about the platform and how it works.
Anyway, let me know what you guys think of it. I'm stoked on the idea, but would love to get some input.

In this Post I will write down everything I leanerd about my journey of quiting and later on how I reached almost 1 year clean from nicotine (18 more days needed till 365 days). Everything will be my take on this topic.
​
I will talk about:

1. Addiction
2. Nicotine
3. Withdrawal
4. Quiting methods
5. Things that might help combating cravings
6. My journey

​
One more thing before I start is that I researched most of the things I write down here if u really want I could link sources if needed.
​
1. Addiction
This one was a big deal for me cos I kinda always battled with addictions videogames, gambling and certain substances. I belive most of you here aware of the fact that you are addicted to vaping or nicotine in general and want to quit or just interested in quiting.
The thing is with addictions are that I belive they are a life long thing you develope once your body is used to a certain substance/substance. There is no truly breaking free from it. Its porbably gonna stay with you for the rest of your life and its important to keep in mind.
You body remembers the feeling that a chemical gives and you build certain brain pathways that are probably wont go away just get weaker with abstinance. I belive even if you quit for a long period of time and you decide to have a few puffs from a friend vape your body gonna have the same reaction and it could lead to a relapse easily.
This all gonna come down to your dicipline and how determined you are to quit. You have to do it for yourself and not for others cos then It won't be that succesfull IMO.
It also suck that some people are more predisposed to addictions than others. I belive I have adhd and I have been medicating with nicotine ever since I started.
​
2. Nicotine
First and foremost! I wanna declare that nicotine is not a poision its a drug. I saw people saying that nicotine is a poision it might be true in that sense that the tobacco plant makes it as a pesticide or something. But for us it creates a chemical reaction in our body that makes us feel good. Dosage makes the poision.
Im just gonna copy paste the pharmacology of nicotine from https://psychonautwiki.org/wiki/Nicotine
Nicotine produces its stimulating effects by agonizing nicotinic acetylcholine receptors, causing the liver to release glucose and the adrenal medulla to release epinephrine (adrenaline).
Once it reaches the brain, nicotine stimulates the release of many neurotransmitters and hormones, including acetylcholine, norepinephrine, epinephrine, arginine vasopressin, serotonin, dopamine, and β-endorphin, which are responsible for the majority of its psychoactive effects.
By increasing the level of acetylcholine in the brain, nicotine enhances concentration. Norepinephrine release causes increased alertness and arousal. With low doses, nicotine enhances the action of norepinephrine and dopamine, which produces typical psychostimulation. Nicotine also has sedative effects as produced by the release of β-endorphin (which reduces anxiety) and enhances the action of serotonin and opioids (which causes sedation)
As you can see it does a LOT of things in your body but in general its pretty safe I could kinda compare it to caffeine toxicity wise. But the route of administation changes lot of things.
​
3. Withdrawal
You have to understand that it might be easier for some people while its gonna suck for others. Physical and mental withdrawal are both present with quiting nicotine. I found that physical symptoms go away first then the mental ones later.
Mental withdrawal was very though and it was hard to push through but since I made it impossible for me to relapse it was a lot easier.
I think while you go through this its the best to distance yourself from nicotine consuming people cos its gonna tempt you and its especially hard to say no.
And its not like your mind not gonna try to cave you in with literall bullshit sentences like : "yeah bro u can vape every 4 days" " oh man I can totally reward myself with some good vapes after a week".
You really have to see through these bullshit lies. In the beginning I found it easy to see through cos it was ridicolous after a while it became sneaky like "100 day mile stone is worthy of a nice vape sesh" or "yeah for real you can vape if you drink" these are so retarded lies and belive me you gonna belive them. I suggest you think about them and not give in too quick.
Sadly if you have been vaping for a long time or addicted to nicotine in general you withdrawal phase can last months. My worsth withdrawal symptoms stopped after 3-4 months after the lesser but still shitty one stopped after 5-7 months.
How I view the withdrawal period

Time without nicotine	Withdrawal effects
Day 1	Most likely nothing or slight irritability
Day 1-3	Irritability, anxiety, anger, and Literally every withdrawal symptom gonna show itself. U gonna feel like shit
1 week	you are probably start to feel slightly better but most all effects stay
30 days	you will feel slightly better but most things stay. You gonna start to see your triggers and porbably gonna have some shitty nights
60 days	I think if you reach this point you have a good chance of quiting. Here its a Lot better than in the beginning and I suggest you try to reach this milestone. You still might feel like shit but at least its not as bad as it used to
100days	Great mile stone. You gonna be angry at yourself if you relapse. You gonna have spikes of withdrawal and sneaky thoughts but less frequent. It still sucked for me tho
100-200 days	When you are getting close to 200 days You gonna feel significantly better. The withdrawal spikes gonna become less frequent and some triggers like needing a vape after a meal probably not existent
200-300 days	You are most likely in the clear after this. You actually feel normal. U still think about vaping but its not really appealing. You are less likely to have sneaky thought too.
1 year	I belive if you can reach it completely off nicotine then you quit. Its only that you shouldnt use nicotine anymore and you will be okay fr.

​
4. Quitting methods
Lets just say its hard to quit and not everyone is capable to do so. Some people never quit cos they cant. You know nicotine is a mood improving chemical and thankfully we aint smoking tobacco which also have antidepressant properties too. Which make it harder to quit
Oh boi. There are 3 quitting methods that I would talk about. Cold turkey, Tapering and replacement therapy.
Cold turkey is the best method imo cos it worked for me while the rest didnt. You just have to say fuck it and no more vapes and you gotta have iron will for this cos its gonna be a bumpy road.
Tapering: I think it can work for some people I tried it before once it worked then life happened. Other times I was just not ready to do it. You basically lower the nicotine content slowly but surely down to 0mg. You need to go slow like decrease a little every 1-2 weeks. But its gonna change from person to person. This basically gonna be a longer experience but gonna make the withdrawals potentially weaker.
Replacement therapy: Well if you claim you are addicted to the motion then replace it with something or at least use nicotine free liquids. I kinda did this next to cold turkey. I had an old cig and I dry puffed it when I was really craving. If you replace the nicotine vapes with another source of nicotine then you are fooling yourself. You are still probaby addicted to the nicotine. I could EASILY use other sources of nicotine and not crave vapes cos I was addicted to the nicotine itself.
​
5. Cravings combating
Welp. This one is hard. I kinda did everything at once lol. I used other substances, took supplements, did breathwork or just cried myself to sleep.
I would really suggest Supplementing NAC which is great at curbing the withdrawal/craving effects by like 70%. I took the pill and withing 10-30 minutes I felt better. Really useful 10/10.
There are other supplements that can help but I didnt really look into them but the NAC is a hit for me.
​
U can take other drugs to feel better like Kratom which is a powdered plant leaf which acts similiarly as a opiate. I dont really recommend cos you can get addicted to this as well but in the beginning it was really helpful for me since It took the edge off. Reduced anxiety irritability and all this mental bs.
​
I also took a a dissociative drug like DXM. Which is a cough syrup lol. Im not really gonna go into details cos using it recreationally can be dangerous and even deadly if you take a cough syrup that has other things next to DXM. ONLY DXM CONTAINING COUGH SYRUP cos u might fucken die. That experience I had one time during the withdrawal made it dissapear for 48 hours. Completely altough I was hangover from the trip but no nic withdrawal which was cool.
​
Psychedelics (LSD, magic mushrooms) this one can be dangerous cos its gonna change how you look at the world around you. It really shifts your view. While its not dangerous physically it can really mess someone up mentaly if you arent strong or prepared enough and can leave you with serious mental issues. Not to mention it might trigger schizophrenia or bipolar if you are already predisposed to them.
But on the bright side it can change the way how you view vaping as a whole. Which is really important when deciding quiting. I tripped a lot cos I usually do it and I didnt have withdrawal during the trips and It kept me on the way of quiting. Cos it encouraged me to continue and all that.
​
Having support in your life its all fine and dandy but For me when I was in the first 6 months I really didnt appreciate the cheering words of my girlfriend cos it didnt help at ALL. I love her dearly but it just didnt help and it just made me sad cos I didnt know if I can keep going cold turkey and didnt want to dissapoint her. Cos at the same time I was cool with relapsing whenever I didnt feel like I owed myself the soberity at all.
​
Excercise lift some weights go for a run get yoour blood pumping. This gonna get good feelings in your body that gonna lessen the withdrawals for sure. Ever heard of the runners high? You would actually get in shape too.
Breath work In the beginning when I was really withdrawing and craving I would take deep breaths and hold them for a while then breath out. Kinda like how I would vape lol. It helped cos you get some oxigen in your body. The other method I use is for 5 secounds I would breath in, hold it for 5 sec, blow out for 5 sec, and hold its for another 5 secounds and this on repeat. This really calms you.
​
6. My journey
I started smoking cigs from the age of 16 but I smoked before that here and there cos I was retarded like that. I didnt think I was gonna get addicted but I did. I smoked until the age of 18 when I discovered vaping and with small breaks and few attempts I quit after 4 years of vaping.
​
In the last 2 years of vaping it was really really heavy use. I basically vaped 24/7 non stop whenever I could.
With my psychedelic journeys I eventually realized the whol picture and said fuck it I wanna quit. I did quit for 1-3 months Im not sure but I relapsed once and it snowballed back into addiction.
Then 6 months after that I decided that I wanna keep experiemnting with other chemicals too like MDMA which compared the rest of the stuff I took was considerably more unhealthy.
And I also had this word come into my mind while tripping on acid that I should use any substance multiple times a week. You shouldnt be high every day U gotta be sober and I do mean yeah caffeine is a drug. I dont think that i should be caffeinated every day or buzzed off nicotine.
I totaly cool with me tripping every 2-3 weeks max or taking something else rarely but I was really against me fucking my health up every day with me vaping like Thomas the steam engine or whatever that cartoon is called.
No doubt its gonna cause more harm than me taking a reasonable dose of any substance on a rare ocasion.
So I quit. One day in Uni I told my friend Hey imma quit Heres my vape and my only juice. Keep it. Imma say when u can give it back. And he held onto it for like 60 ish days. After that I sold my set up and never looked back.
Im not gonna lie In the beginning I started to feel retarded like something was wrong with my mental space. I couldnt pay attention to others talking or what I was gonna say. Turned out I was treating my undiagnosed adhd with nicotine which masked my symptoms very well.
​
A painful journey but really manageable.
​
Best of luck my guys feel free to hit me up for advices this addiction is really like any other addiction its not impossible to break free.

I am proud that Dota 2 doesn’t artificially gatekeep progress. If you wanna be a dumbass who learns Meepo as your first hero you are free to do so. League locking champions behind progress is arbitrary, un-competitive and ...addictive?
See that’s the thing. I bang out a couple of games because I want a nice low stress game where I go 20-0 and and the end I get a nice little progress bar for my current level. When I level up I get a nice little box that gives me a reward. I can then unlock skins or heroes. It’s that little reward loop that keeps League players playing league.
Now I would never recommend we regress to buying heroes. But I do think rewarding players for their play would go a long way towards:

1. Keep players playing. For many ranked is not reward enough. That isn’t the Dota way, I play to improve and get better. But I can see why making progress towards some bar filing is satisfying and reason to comeback. Only reason I fire up League is to play with work friends but it’s that XP bar filling makes my brain release dopamine.
   
2. Reduce smurfing/alts. Now this won’t stop divine/immortal players from playing in alts but why would a 3K player try to stomp 1k games when they could be making progress towards items on their main account?
   

Literally just do why you were doing before Valve. Give an item on level up. Don’t artificially pace it either. Just make it untradeable or ungiftable. You shouldn’t be able to profit off playing Dota but there’s no harm in being rewarded.
A ton of new players who would he dissuaded by the massive learning curve and harsh community could be convinced to stay around if they just got a few quick items for playing and earning a few rank ups. It’s how League keeps their new players locked in with their “Blue Essence” rewards.
tl;dr Valve has a massive influx of new and returning players, they could do well to keep them by giving them free untradeable/marketable items per level to make their brain release dopamine when they play the game. It’s what League does to get you through the rough phase of learning a MOBA.
Edit: If you really want to keep the 3,4,5k players on their main accounts. Introduce escalating odds on like an Arcana or something. Each level gives you a .1 percent increase in getting an Arcana. EZ gambling addiction tied to playing Dota.

Visuals
Economic Evolution Thomas J Novak
Disclaimers 1. I wish to contend that Micro and Macro Economics each constitute a hidden branch of evolution. To be clear, I’m not arguing for an analogy, ​I’m arguing each branch is an evolutionary process; and with this comes the mathematical framework needed to scientifically ​objectify success (major goal for every Capitalist). 2. The quantitative aspects are partially rooted in Game Theoretic Evolution. I do not expect this theory will garner majority support or ​understanding. It is only an esoteric theoretical ideal; but it is my hope that this will gradually change until one-day we have a Utopia. 3. The mechanism is voluntary through rational self-incentives. It advocates for a change in perspective for optimal decision making purposes. 4. Dollars and other fiat currencies are still completely necessary. Fiat currency constitutes a valuable technology that eliminates the need for ​bartering, yielding considerable savings in life’s prime asset - TIME. 5. I apologize to the reader in advance for the long essay. I hope it is "worth" your time.
Key Conclusions
Present day humanity is full of capitalists that have the right idea but are missing some key math. This is causing them to behave inefficiently in the context of their own self-interests. Ideal Capitalism is Pareto Optimal and should be practiced by all; and it should lead to maximal economic growth. I also wish to conjecture that a new Nash Equilibrium is available to our race: Perpetual peacetime under the individual Pareto Optimal Strategy of Ideal Capitalism as every individual looks to maximize their self-fortune and troll farms are voluntarily dismantled. If this sounds too good to be true, note that it very well may have been for all of human-history save the last few decades. Key developments are nuclear weapons and the internet. Discussed more in the last section.
Introduction
The "science" of Economics is not yet a science. Don't get me wrong - micro-economics is just about there; but macro-econ is a totally different story. Some call it “The Dismal Science” because it makes many quantitative claims that are inconsistent with empirical data. An example is the claim that John Rockefeller’s fortune could be made comparable to contemporary fortunes by adjusting his dollars for inflation and real growth. In fact only adjusting his hours for real growth does the trick.
In general macro-econ has a zero-sum-dollar-centric structure that does not allow for input of things like maternity and child rearing - two fundamentally "valuable" human activities. Another problem is that planetary-wide risks like war, (and that which is assured by "Mutually Assured Destruction" (MAD)), are not naturally measurable in dollars.
Some concepts from financial mathematics and science can generalize economic measurements into a co-compatible theory that almost seems too simple to be necessary. Basic results agree with common sense in every way. Some conclusions are so obvious the calculation seems pointless. Others might be beyond common sense similar to the notion that the Earth on which one walks is anything but flat. The former supports credence for the latter. All examples of human stupidity supports a need for all of it.
Ideal Capitalism
Most powers past through present can be thought cold, "calculating”, and self-interested; and most presently embrace association with Capitalism. Paradoxically, human history, (even recent), is a litany of fighting and stupidity and hurt feelings. These are inefficiencies from the Capitalist perspective, so something must be wrong with these “calculations”.
The argument will start with a Micro-Economic exercise intended to provide quantitative framework to measure just how unCapitalistic many present-day capitalists are acting, by unitizing all their actions in a scientific manner. Any Capitalist wishing to maximize their net-worth will be made more materialistically rich simply by maintaining complete indifference about others, understanding the entire picture, and trusting numbers. Wall Street can confirm this is its goal.
“Complete indifference” means precisely 0 concern for anything other than material-self-worth and 100% concern for material-self-worth. Nonzero concern for others, positive or negative, is suboptimal since it distracts from the objective of maximizing self-worth. Footnote 1: “Others” does not include the friends and family category. All intentional altruism can be represented easily by having those individuals' interests summed and grouped together so as to be viewed as part of the Capitalist’s “self-interest”. All reasoning forward is unaffected by how many friends and family are now implied to be included.
The results can empower all decision makers to calculate in the only way possible: with actual mathematics. The numbers will sometimes disagree with intuition; but the numbers will always be correct. The optimal strategy will hardly change except for sufficiently wealthy individuals. The proof can be seen empirically by back-testing the model in history on the domain in which all success is measured: quality-weighted-time (qwt). The definition of qwt will leverage Game Theoretic Evolution and is discussed more below.
Some conclusions may be counterintuitive similar to the way natural selection favored Symbiogenesis; but maximum profit calls for absolute “trust” in numbers above all else - exactly as exhibited in microbial evolution. Any call for “selfless” acting resulting in benefits to others is strictly incidental; and any less is unselfishly selfish in that it renders this inefficient capitalist less wealthy than maximally possible.
Step 1 - Any political bias about aiding others should be deleted. An “Ideal Capitalist” expresses precisely 0 concern for others and what others think - no more, no less. As long as an individual is correctly acting in their own best interests, they are acting as a Capitalist. Contra-positively one can claim to be a capitalist and act inefficiently against their own interests as many “capitalists” will be shown are doing today. I suggest a new term “Maximalist” to mean an Ideal Capitalist and avoid the need for case sensitivity.
Step 2 - Success Spawns Success. What is meant by quality-weighted-time? The definition comes from the only objective arbiter possible: Evolution through Survival of the Fittest. Something is “fit”, or “successful”, if it results in more quantity (Q) or more quality (q), where more quality means it produced more Quantity faster - which renders it more successful. This is The Tautology of Evolutionary Game Theory (The Tautology). For any evolutionary process, quantity is the metric which quantifies success. Quality is measured in quantity per unit of time (q=Q/t). Note that multiplying q=Q/t with t yields Q=qwt: the metric of success that necessarily satisfies The Tautology. Footnote 2: The word “tautology” is meant in the propositional logic sense. No negative connotation should be inferred.
Step 3 - How to connect economics with evolution?
Micro-economic decision strategy for trading time (t) for dollars ($), (or $ for t), amounts to a “phenotype”, (or observable trait), coded for by genetics inherited or mutated, and ideas learned or created. Respectively: - Inherited genetics constrain every rational human to be “risk averse”, regardless of self-perception, because natural selection favored and continues to favor risk aversion. Defined below and proven further below. - Mutated genes are almost never favorable for a human so this case will be discarded (although this force is quite powerful over quintillions of human-hours). - Richard Dawkins creatively postulated ideas to be “memes”: new evolutionarily viable packets of information, subject to selection forces, as they spread from person to person with varying levels of success overtime. Respectively gene inheritance and mutation is analogous to meme learning and creation. Furthermore the economy can be seen as a subsection of the biosphere governed primarily by evolution through forces of selection. The economy evolves through selection of both genes and memes, and memes are more abstract; but this should not change anything about the evolutionary game theory. After all humanity itself is naturally occurring, so Artificial Selection of Genes and Memes can be seen as a more complex extended phenotype coded for by the evolution of genes through Natural Selection. Any argument that “Artificial Selection” constitutes a meaningful difference from “Natural Selection” must first come to terms with the observation that humanity is itself, naturally occurring.
Step 4 - What is the definition of “risk averse”? The mathematical definition of risk averse simply requires diminishing returns to be experienced on assets like dollars. For example: an additional $1M adds less “utility” if you presently have $2B, compared to if you presently have $2M. If a person is not risk averse, then more success encourages more risky behavior. This is inconsistent with the observation that more success means one has more to lose. Therefore any risk-inclined individual cannot be an Ideal Capitalist as they will almost surely go broke gambling.
Step 5 - What is “utility”? Utility is the abstract micro-economic concept that, by definition, quantifies value. The unsettled question of how to actually do this is addressed below.
Total Utility = True Material Self-Worth = “well-offness”. All have one-to-one correspondence with each other. All are “mutually inclusive”. For example: twice the quantity of utility, by definition, means twice material self-worth; and so, the individual is exactly twice better-off. Diminishing returns do not apply to quantities of utility.
Step 6 - How to define an objective function to maximize utility? Per Wikipedia: “Consider a set of alternatives facing an individual, and over which the individual has a preference ordering. A ‘utility function’ is able to represent those preferences if it is possible to assign a real number to each alternative, in such a way that alternative A is assigned a number greater than alternative B if, and only if, the individual prefers alternative A to alternative B.”
Keynote: dollars are not material wealth, dollars buy material wealth, with diminishing returns, limited by genes, memes, and the quality and Quantity of the Marketplace (respectively qQMP).
To illustrate this, consider how rich you would be with $1T cash on Mars in the present day marketplace. Personally as an oxygen breathing Capitalist, I would view my self-worth as constituting a liability - measurable in my personal subjective frame of reference in units of time, weighted by some self-knowable quality of life representing the quantity of misery per hour that I experience dying alone. Presently the quality of the marketplace on Mars is exactly 0 because 0 quantity is available for purchase. Footnote 3: The quality of life purchasable given the Time and Place is shown below to be bounded from above, although it is by no means bounded from below.
Back to Earth. If sufficiently rich, then maximizing material wealth calls for buying everything in desired amounts to maximize present quality of Life (qoL), holding ample dollars in reserve to spend on future qoL (like new inventions) and future quantity (like new medicine), and allocating the rest to increase future qQ which is not presently available for purchase. In keeping with The Tautology, qoL enhancements will provide for faster consumption of Quantity (Q=qwt). Note how perfectly this fits with The Tautology.
Ideally a good Capitalist with sufficient dollars would employ a strategy so as to maximize qoL at every point in time by exhausting most/all dollars by death. Any argument that an individual cannot meaningfully increase future qQMP fails. As an example: a medical breakthrough for genetic predispositions could yield considerably more time for any one capitalist, with expected returns modeled via actuarial mathematics. Consider just how far Humanity has come since the birth of The Enlightenment - it is easy to see how the not-so-distant future may include considerably more qQoL for sale. (Conversely the future may include far less qQoL if macro-decision-public-policy modeling continues to fail to quantify/unitize the cost of war - discussed more in the Macro Economic qwt section below.)
qQ enhancements, although more subjective, can be substantially accelerated by one talented individual. Examples include Albert Einstein, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Jeff Bezos, and Elon Musk. All are responsible for inventing and/or producing new things which I personally enjoy - the qQoL that I can purchase is greater as a result of their work. My time and money could not purchase such things if they were not invented. As discussed next, micro-economic quality weights are quality of Life (qoL) weights. They have an upper bound that can be “objectively” unitized and measured by the self-interested party's own frame of reference.
Step 7 - How can an individual objectively define an upper bound for these inherently subjective quality weights with any mathematical rigor? Is it possible that more dollars does not always result in more utility? Yes!
Proof Reductio ad Absurdum
Ripping off an idea from one of the greatest thinkers ever - I propose a financial thought experiment: pretend it is possible for you to pause all of society and gamble once at the “Name Your Winnings Casino”.
Here you can choose entering into an even bet: 50% of the time you win the largest number of dollars you can mathematically express = $P; or 50% of the time you suffer absolute ruin: the casino takes everything of material value and your dollars and returns you to the real world where no insurance policies exist for you and no friends or family are able to ease your loss by lending a couch to sleep on or pulling strings for a job offeinterview. If you lose you reenter the world a naked homeless person “worth” exactly $0.
Four observations follow:

1. The decision to bet is made independent of any consideration of others, consistent with the Ideal Capitalist.
   
2. Any sane human with the smallest capacity for self-honestly could conservatively estimate a walk-away number A, (denominated in dollars), such that if present “net worth” is greater than $A then no bet.
   
3. No rational person choosing to bet would play more than once because either they’d lose or they’d win $P and have received the payout they named. “Letting it ride” constitutes an obviously dumb decision born out of the unwillingness to simply express the larger number in the first bet; however, a risk-inclined individual always values more over what they have and so they would be compelled to keep betting. Therefore rationality is mutually exclusive with risk-inclination. Furthermore if the betting person is risk averse, then $A is strictly less than $P for some minimum value of $P.
   
4. Some confident rational individual might argue no such number $A exists for them because they’re so good they can start all over if they lose and earn a new fortune; and it would at first glance seem this individual is correct.
   

Many logical conclusions result:
A. An honest estimate for $A irrefutably reveals a hidden upper bound for this individual’s “Utility Curve”. Specifically if the function A’($A) = A’ maps to utility derived by $A dollar denominated “wealth”, then no amount of dollars even exists for this individual to choose to bet. Mathematically: “Net worth” > “Bet value” => “Net worth” > “50% times upside minus 50% times downside” => A’($A) > .5A’($A+$P) - .5A’($A) => 1.5A’($A) > .5A’($A+$P) => 3A’($A) > A’($A+$P) for all values of $P (The left hand-side must be greater or the bet would not be declined by a rational individual.)
B. 3A’ is not presently purchasable with any amount of dollars. 3A’ may be purchased in some future marketplace, (possibly with less than A future dollars), in the form of a medical breakthrough or buying future children birthday presents, but it is not currently purchasable in the present as demonstrated by the individual’s refusal to bet. Conversely A future dollars may lose “purchasing power” of just A’ if the future marketplace is inferior. Therefore true material-worth is fundamentally a function of the marketplace and cannot even be expressed in terms of dollars.
C. Most choosing to bet would logically express the upside payout $P as a sequence of 9s. Many more would know to use powers of powers. Knowledge of Knuth’s Up Arrow Notation could simultaneously save time and yield considerably “more upside”. Due consideration for exactly how much time should be spent writing out fantastically large numbers reveals an irrefutably objective hidden limiting factor: this person’s lifetime - measurable in units of time. This reveals one of two hidden domains on which value must be measured - TIME!
D. From this it directly follows that the confident individual in (4) is wrong. Some number $A<$P must exist, EVEN FOR THEM. However this individual is sure $A doesn’t and keeps writing numbers out for $P until they die. Therefore $A for them equals the number they have written out at time of death, never having played the game. I believe this is the definition of a Darwinian unfit capitalist - completely inconsistent with the Ideal Capitalist.
Analysis
The argument above establishes a horizontal bound for utility – lifetime measurable in units of time. It also establishes a finite upper bound for utility itself (represented by the area of the “utility rectangle” - see spreadsheet). This implies a finite upper bound for the rectangle’s height must exist; and this is empirically supported by the observation that billionaires are not known to blow through their life fortune in any short-period of time.
So why does any sufficiently wealthy capitalist focus on earning more dollars and die before exhausting most/all of their dollars (last death if family inheritance involved)? If sufficiently wealthy, material wealth is necessarily a bounded function of The Time Period, or the “quality and Quantity of the Marketplace”. TTP = qQMP >= qQoL. In other words, the marketplace itself is secretly an asset for every Capitalist!
qMP(TTP) = Max quality of life, or “max utility per hour” available for purchase in TTP QMP(TTP) = Max Quantity of life, or “max utility” for purchase in TTP (IE a longer vacation or medicine)
Thus on the micro level, quality weights are utility weights; and utility weights are capped by The Time Period. Thus it is the case that for every (finite) individual, a finite upper bound for utility is self-measurable in Time Period-Weighted Time (qwt = TPWT). For example: 2020 hours have far more value to any sufficiently rational and wealthy individual (SRWI) than 1920 hours. And as the earlier questionnaire (hopefully) shows, this is realizable by most middle-class people today. In other words, today’s middle class is sufficiently wealthy to the extent TPWT resolves the Rockefeller paradox. Footnote8: The size of the middle class itself is unfortunately shrinking. This has potential to result in negative externalities for all.
Since an Ideal Capitalist maximizes self-material-wealth above all else, then if they were also sufficiently wealthy, they would measure value in Time-Period-Weighted Hours since they would always purchase maximum utility per hour. This is by definition, since any SRWI has all necessary means to purchase max utility available per hour. (Note just how important quick access to true information would be.) Footnote 9: Neuroscience could use Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) to objectively measure the Micro-Economic utility unit as “Neurotransmitter-Molecular-Count Weighted Hours”. Consideration for how to weight different neurotransmitters (like Serotonin vs Dopamine) would be necessary. For now, we are all similar enough for “time” to suffice, at least for short run measurements. For example: what is the penalty for severe crimes? “Time in jail” or death (all the person’s time).
Quantifying the Marketplace
Given the average life expectancy now is more than twice that of prehistoric man, the marketplace itself is worth strictly more than 50% of any sufficiently wealthy individual’s “asset portfolio”. Just note “time is money”. Footnote 10: They need not be rational to "realize" this time, so long as their doctor is sufficiently competent. "Realization" will come in the form of living longer, quite consistent with the accounting definition of gain/loss realization.
Keynote - a Maximalist will do more than just maximize present qQ purchased. They will also divert unneeded dollars to maximize future qQMP so that more qQ is available for purchase. Thus the Maximalist calculation includes due consideration for additional dollars that will be needed given future qQ becomes available.
Squaring Theory with Reality
Most already know most of this, at least on the common-sense level. So why don’t sufficiently wealthy Capitalists invest maximum dollars with less strings attached to maximize the future? Is it because that would help everyone else and constitute socialism? No! In this context socialism is Adam Smith’s “Invisible Hand”. A good Capitalist aims for precisely 0 concern about others, and any concern for implied socialism would constitute nonzero concern. Such concern would amount to incomprehensible irrationality far beneath any good Capitalist. So what else could it be?
Perhaps it’s simply the fact that much of humanity is still measuring their net-worth in the wrong dimension for the inefficient purpose of feeling superior to others with less money. Anyone currently doing this quite literally knows the price of everything and the value of nothing, not even their own self fortune, because they are using the wrong dimension of measurement. quality-weighted-time is the objectively correct way in which real value should be measured, and quality weighting is limited only by The Time Period in which time and money are being spent.
More noteworthy, any human mistaking dollars for qwt for this scorekeeping reason is still violating the prime rule of being a good Capitalist - they are demonstrating nonzero-concern for what others think of them. Implicitly and inefficiently, these individuals are expressing negative concern for others, as now is measurable by how worse off they are in units of their time. Specifically this is calculable as the opportunity cost of not investing more dollars for an enhanced future marketplace, measurable by others in said marketplace by the cost to this imperfect capitalist’s life expectancy, (all unitized in units of time).
Equity Miracle Swap Instruments
Perhaps the above explanations are not exhaustive of the full truth. Maybe some sufficiently wealthy Capitalists simply do not have the means to invest their dollars in a way that can reliably pay greater dividends. Therefore I propose a new type of financial derivative instrument called an “Equity Miracle Swap”. These would be voluntarily issued as contracts from the mega-wealthy. Here is a hypothetical example:
Rational (and thus risk averse) Billionaire-G (BG) possessing $100B in dollar-denominated-capital can now do research and will likely find they are genetically predisposed to a (presently) incurable illness (let’s say Small Cell Lung Cancer = SCLC). BG could use the chancy math in the proof above and might determine that Billions $91-$100 have minimal true value to him/herself when converted to qwt. Therefore BG could decide to start up an enterprise to find a cure for SCLC and use a $10B Equity Miracle Swap = EMSSCLC-$10B, or just “EMS” for short. The purpose is to maximally incent the researchers, who might otherwise just be employees. The contract would stipulate that all equity in the enterprise transfers over to the research team only upon successful development of the cure.
When measured in dollars, the payoff for BG is represented by the performance of the stock, which is greater than -$10B if no cure; or -$10B if the miracle cure is found. The former is greater than the latter. Which do you think BG will prefer? Obviously the latter, especially if they wind up contracting SCLC in the future! But the former was greater measured in dollars? How to reconcile?
This can be quantitatively reconciled by using the correct unit of measurement - qwt. Here is how: the newly discovered cure might empower their remaining dollars to purchase considerably more qwt in the future. The real expected return on investment for BG could be calculated actuarially as follows: Expected ROI = { Expected Return }/{ Investment } = { E(Δqwt | Miracle) * [ P(Miracle | EMS) - P(Miracle | no EMS) ] }/{ A’($100B) - A’($90B) } Where: 1. A’($D) maps to utility measured in quality-weighted-time presently purchasable by D dollars 2. E(Δqwt | Miracle) = Expected change in purchasable qwt given miracle cure occurs in lifetime 3. P(Miracle | Event X) = Probability of Miracle given Event X
Note that because BG is risk averse, diminishing returns render billions $91-$100 worth very little qwt. Therefore the cost in the denominator = A’($100B) - A’($90B) constitutes a very small amount of qwt, rendering the expected ROI very large, even for relatively small changes to P(Miracle). Obviously the lawyers could tinker with the terms of the contract. Finally note that society is incidentally made better off if the cure is found.
Macro-Economic qwt
Please now consider the benefit of a qwt-centric model from a Macro-Economic standpoint in the context of the Doomsday Clock, where as always, economics can objectively measure value (or “GDP”) in units of quality-weighted-time. On this Macro scale, the quantity unit will be "Healthy Human Hours", calculated as always by multiplying quality weights of presently healthy humans, with units of time, where any human is healthy if he/she produces more future human hours. Note how naturally maternity and child-raising now fit into GDP.
This may also help resolve the argument over which crimes should be punishable with incarceration - specifically only crimes where the individual is deemed likely to contribute less negative future qwt to GDP when in jail vs when out of jail. Also there is a natural extension of this for the death penalty, although I do not wish to make such moral judgements. Footnote 10: Any argument that population overgrowth leads to mass death is correct. Policy models need only step back and estimate healthy human hours in the more distant future. Calculus can be used to model public policy decisions from present-day infinitely far into the future and compare infinite relativities for different policy options.
Also consider that actuarial modeling could be used to objectively estimate the cost of disinformation posed to every Capitalist on the planet, measurable of course, in units of time. Specifically calculated as expected changes to Humanity’s Expectation of Life on the Doomsday Clock, plus individual life expectancy given Midnight, times the probability of midnight. Also observe the need and means for due discount in modeling the "decrease" in the future qQMP (which might include radiation).
The Emergence of Economic Symbiogenesis
Try to arrive at the conclusion any good Capitalist must. Here is a hint - genetic Symbiogenesis resulted in the planetary-wide cooperation of all plant and animal life to regulate Earth’s Oxygen concentration. Note the immense success is, of course, measured in qwt. Weighting in this context needs to satisfy the same tautology as always. Therefore the final answer on this Mega-Macro scale comes in organism-count-weighted units of time. This is the current game strategy that genetic Evolution has concluded on Earth to date. It came from pitting individual selfish microbial interests against one another in the 0-rules game of survival of the fittest. The result is the current marriage between the Plant and Animal Kingdoms! (Like all great marriages there are still a few mentionable skirmishes.)
Also observe the micro-macro relational analogue between Chloroplasts and Mitochondria with Plants and Animals. Consider how this might analogize individual decision making with the marketplace as a whole.
If you are religious, consider just how correct this implies your understanding of God’s wish for the general wellbeing of every individual to be.
My conclusion is that there is a trail of breadcrumbs for our species to follow and we’ve had the right idea all along. We’ve just been doing the math wrong. Now every decision maker can better understand how to measure their own self-fortune and get to growing it faster!
Also interesting is the game theoretic argument for why every person must be allowed full forgiveness - it is the only way world leaders who are concerned for their own wellbeing could possibly embrace such a model. Astonishingly full forgiveness is 100% consistent with every major religion’s claim of what God hopes all of us can achieve. In economics, any desire for revenge can now be seen as The Sunk Cost Fallacy, measurable as always in units of qwt.
Finally, I wish to conjecture that a new Nash Equilibrium is available to our race: Perpetual peacetime under the individual Pareto Optimal Strategy of Ideal Capitalism as every individual looks to maximize their self-fortune and troll farms are voluntarily dismantled. If this sounds too good to be true, note that it very well may have been for all of human-history save the last few decades.
Key Technological Developments 1. The advent of nuclear weapons which align all of humanity's interests in a way which never used to exist. Even survivors of a nuclear war will be far worse off, now as measurable by decreases to the quality and Quantity of any future radioactive marketplace. Less qwt for purchase! 2. The advent of the internet renders information around the globe nearly free and instantaneous. If we can learn to be more self-interested, the only conclusion which rationally follows is to dismantle all troll farms for the simple purpose of maximizing Macro Time until Doomsday. The New Nash Equilibrium available to our race could be quantitatively modeled with actuarial techniques, and the optimal solution is to push Midnight infinitely far into the future by allowing every rational decision maker the means to make rational decisions with 100% true information. The internet sets up a worldwide analogy with our nervous system.
Footnote 11 - The Micro-Economic Model is now consistent with John Lennon's definition of life success: happiness. When asked what he wanted to “be” when he grew up, John responded "happy". John’s teacher thought he misunderstood the question. If John's teacher had instead followed up with the question to quantify: "How happy do you want to be?" - John could have replied: "as happy as possible for all my years.”
Footnote 12 - Warren Buffet's advice to "do what you love so you never work a day in your life" is quantified naturally by the model. I hope that more will start to take this advice. The qwt-centric-micro-model shows they will quite literally be made richer as a result. Given that richer people tend to contribute more to GDP, society will be made incidentally better off as a result. Star Trek almost had it but missed two words: “we work to better ourselves, and incidentally, the rest of mankind”.

Hey... first post ... weird title kind of but in a weird mood.
So..yesterday I self excluded myself. Of course I didn’t want to, I do know I needed to. It’s a strange empty feeling. What I feel like I’ve been living for the past few years (12+) I can no longer do. Nothing else mattered to me. Draining it was, of course of my bank account, but I almost feel like I’ve been running a marathon going no where. I was on the end of my last gamble-thon.. at one of my usual slots and the bonus is counting like it does ( the lightening hits each ball or whatever) and I’m just thinking to myself : I’m so tired of this long drawn out bonus shit .. something like that , I was sleep deprived but my point is the goal of getting to do what you wanted it to (win bonus) I was tired of .. rambling but it was strange Anyways, do you feel like your emotions play a role in wether or not you gamble? Sounds like a stupid question as I re read it cuz I don’t think Im articulating but I feel like I don’t hear about or people talk as much about why they gamble .. other than the almost it’s a “strictly business” all about the money kind of thing... I gamble because it feels at the time , that there’s nothing else I’d rather be doing .. an escape.. is there a root cause? Is it just on to the next dopamine releasing .. pulse increasing activity ? That’s all I have for now 😬

Based on this guide
Pretty much any tip in that guide paid off or will pay off soon
Long-term efficiency is way more important than people think

So before we start with the analysis, let's break down how much BIS did progress within 3 months and what it could have been. I don't know the exact dates for everything, but it should be pretty much in that order. Also prolly not everything, but that's what I could find and what I think was important.

Recap

Date	Content	Note
30.04.	Chapter 16	First new chapter unlock
30.04.	Rukia SSR	First new limited SSR (if you don't count in Uno), also Kensei
30.04.	Exchange Event	New Battle Arena exchange event
-	Lvl cap increase	Now 77
08.05.	Chapter 17	No new chapter since then
-	Tosh UR Bankai	First new limited banner (Shunsui & Yama were on beta)
14.05.	Lisa	Also Hiyori
14.05.	Exchange Event	Defend The Karakura Town 1
14.05.	Free resources	Character ranking pages etc. got a rework => more jades
22.05.	Seireitei Nightmare
22.05.	Free resources	More free jades & essences through squad rewards
-	Shunsui Soul Box	We all will remember the "unscheduled maintenance" :)
06.06.	Cross-server pvp	It worked well for a beta test, ngl
06.06.	Free resources	Material drop rate got increased by a lot
08.06.	Ulq v1
18.06.	Bug fix	BT Soul Hall
18.06.	Yammy	Recharge only
22.06.	Whitey

We basically got 4 + 1 (f2p + Yammy) SSR units, 3 UR units, 1 soul box banner, 2 new chapters, cross-server PvP, a new PvE mode, a lot of f2p friendly changes and 1 game-breaking bug fix within 3 months.
So, going by that recap, they probably aim to release 2 SSRs and at least 1 UR, probably 2 URs per month and then rerun some events. Either in the form of Karakura town 2 (choose between multiple limited SSRs) or Soul Box banners.

Leaks

3 months of content wasn't that much, let's be honest here. No new chapters within 6 weeks is incredibly sad, let's hope they release Ch 18-20 in one patch.
However, a lot of stuff has been leaked which is very, very likely to come soonish (TM).
I wanna stress again: These are leaks and so far none of them has been proven wrong (except for White Ichigo's release date). In fact, they are all either confirmed or yet to be confirmed.

Leak Date	Content	Note
02.05.	Guide released	Common new player trap guide (just as a reference)
08.05.	Original cast of characters, 2	Bankai Ikkaku, Shinji, Grimmjow, White Ichigo are the only currently unreleased UR units
-	UR characters	Story: White Ichigo Bankai appears in Ch 16, Grimmjow is an enemy in Ch 18, Shinji in Ch 16 and Bankai Ikkaku appears somewhere between Ch 18 and 20.
-	UR characters	Banner: Only White Ichigo currently has a banner and Bankai Tosh already released
-	UR characters	Skillset & models: All 4 have polished skillsets & models
09.05.	Cross-server	Has been released a month afterwards
09.05.	Soul Society quests	Double reward events
10.05.	Season pass	Had been leaked earlier, but that's the earliest date I had to with that
-	Season pass	Modes: At least 2 modes, most likely 3 modes. At least 1 purchasable (Elite).
-	Season pass	Quests: Duration probably 6 weeks, Elite has more quests and pass lvls, as in other gacha games
-	Season pass	Analog, 2 new subscriptions: Monthly card (300 VIP recharge) for 100 jades / daily / month, lifetime card (980 VIP recharge) for 100 jades / daily / forever as in other gacha games
-	Season pass	Gambling: "Lucky wheel" as in other gachas, somehow related to season pass
-	Season pass	Rewards: We only know that Yoruichi is tied to the pass
20.05.	New Soul Halls	Up to 8 new Soul Halls and up to 40 statue units leaked
22.05.	Espada #8 & #9
23.05.	Ads	Ads for currencies was an user suggestion (I hate you)
23.05.	Extreme challenge	New mode: Faction tower as in AFK Arena
-	Faction tower	You can only use units of 1 soul hall and these challenges open up on certain days
-	Faction tower	Azure;Available on Monday; Friday; & Sunday
-	Faction tower	Tiger;Available on Tuesday; Friday; & Sunday
-	Faction tower	BT;Available on Wednesday; Friday; & Sunday
-	Faction tower	Bird;Available on Thursday; Friday; & Sunday
25.05.	New chapters	Traces for at least 12 more chapters after Ch 18
25.05.	PvE Mode	New mode: Requires you to battle with certain units in your formation (e.g. Kon, 4 SSR, etc.)
25.05	New relic?	Tenshiheiso, which is probably tied to Yoruichi
25.05.	Squad boss 2	Similar to AFK Arenas 2nd guild boss, daily activity points generate currency, squad boss can be spawned with that currency
25.05.	New gambling event	Egg smasher: Similar to AFK Arenas Tile Event, you can smash eggs with hammers, hammers cost jades, and the smash itself also costs jades
-	Egg smasher	As of now you can win gold and jades. AFKA also has units and other goodies in it aswell
25.05.	Soul Box Shunsui	Was released the same day it got leaked through an UNSCHEDULED MAINTENANCE (my ass)
-	Soul Box Yama	Leaked
06.06.	Ulq v1	Got released
06.06.	Orihime SSR	Confirmation that her upgrade to SSR is intended, but also SSR->UR is/was intended
11.06.	Cross-server	Alternating game mode: Gladiator Arena is a 6 man formation Best of 3
13.06.	War souls	18 new war souls leaked, potentially all character souls
13.06.	Cross-server	Global opening leak
18.06.	Nel & Halibel
18.06.	Espada #6	Could be Luppi, Grimmjow or an alternate form of Grimmjow

Tbh, this all should have been day 1 content. But whatever, we will keep these leaks in mind for the upcoming analysis.

Long-term efficiency

I created the guide above 6 weeks ago. Since then 6 more weeks have passed by. Let's see where our long-term efficiency is currently standing.

Don't spend jades on anything apart from limited summoning

#24 always applies, Apart from that in particual these are tips #1-5, #7-8, #17, #29, #30.
(#1 - #4) With the introduction of Soul Box Banners, we definitely only want to use jades for summoning. We expect every UR banner character to get a soul box which means awakening a weapon once, if not twice is realistic if you plan ahead. Even the third awakening is not impossible, granted you probably won't get to it during one soul box run. Being a dolphin with both amulets every month is probably going to be enough for that.
That said, summon tokens can't be used during soul box summons which means summoning 2* characters with tokens during limited banners and using jades on soul box banners is the way to go (updated guide coming soon TM) most likely.
Also, since we are now 3 months into the game, we definitely know that:

• (#5) Zangetsu is 100% f2p and can be even summoned with an incredible luck during the Kenpachi contest
• (#6) Unchanged
• (#7) Stamina purchases are an extreme waste. When I was close to lvl 72, someone else was close to lvl 74. Depending on the banner type, that's something between 150 to 200 pulls. Like come on, seriously?
• If you're asking yourself how much stamina that would be - it's like the first few until it costs 80 jades per day +- a purchase for 80. Yes, the common bad advice people have been giving stacks up heavily.
• We are talking about only 300 jades per day! But over the course of (at that time) 11 weeks that added up to something around 23 000 jades. Within a year that would be 109 500 jades invested on stamina. 109 500 jades, just think about that. That's almost 3 4* URs, or 1 5* UR + 1 4* UR. 108 multi pulls on Soul Box.
• And what did he get? Currently, he's 2 levels ahead, but going by the XP curves, eventually at level 100 or so I would be either pretty close to his level or even at the same level if he stopped buying XPs right now. Otherwise I would be gap closing hard onto him since XP requirements become quite steep. 110 000 XP advantage is pretty much nothing in higher levels.
• Even if he had some levels on me, so what? PvP is not decided by levels, cross-server even gets adjusted, and we will eventually hit the level cap anyways. As soon as we hit the level cap, every purchased stamina is going to be wasted.
• This is especially true since the increase in material drops. You get way more materials for less stamina, hence you hit the gear cap way earlier.
• (#8) Same goes for gold. Once you hit max gear on all of your main units, you either gonna buy gold statues or upgrade new units. There's nothing to do with gold. Gold is literally meant to be a stackable resource so you get your daily dopamine injection when you see your 1 trillion gold stacked. It's a useless resource in most gacha games, including but not limited to AFKArena, Duel Links, Evertale and what not. BIS is no exception.
• (#9 - #10) With the global reset after a cross-server season you will be reset to 0 in Kenpachi Arena 1 (Veteran Battleground). Bronze 10 that is. Literal garabge tier. This means your valor income will drop significantlly until you hit back your Diamond / Grandmaster rank which takes days because you don't want to buy tickets. Also cross-server becomes a valubale valor resource. That said, don't buy tickets. And don't miss on Kenny during Kenny Contest. It will become harder to get him for new servers from now on.
• (#11) Unchanged
• (#12) This got even worse with the latest update, given that war souls now have more red dots. Be aware of this trap.
• (#13 - #14) With the leak from 13.06. we know that a lot of new character souls are coming. We don't know when, but we know they are coming. Hence, waiting was the correct call. Mindlessly promoting just for the sake of it will put you behind in terms of War Souls. I mean what does a 7* Kira give you if you don't use him? Don't you think that his soul (potentially, if he gets one) is better suited for you?
• This also means going for bonds is still not ideal unless you really can ignore the soul. Either way, patience is key (reminder: #24).
• (#15 - #16) Nothing changed. In fact, after maxing out your characters you should focus on promoting side characters with useful Heroic War Souls (4th slot) to Orange. Since the clarification update we know that all characters have a total war soul part on their 4th slot.
• (#17) Awh, yes, one of my favorites. Daily reminder that the highest Soul Jade Statue within your current cap gets outperformed by the next level high Gold Statue. Which means after unlocking that stage, your previous investment into the high Soul Jade Statue would be wasted.
• Consider this, the Soul Hall perks after unlocking Soul Hall lvl 3 are minimal and require 5 digit, if not 6 digit jades to max out which you are not going to get any time soon because we are level locked for quite some time.
• So buying the lvl 70 high Jade Statue, which cost 1 456 jades each, or around 7 200 for the 5 in your hall, are an extreme waste. Even if you would reach the next Soul Hall level ... what do you get from it? Really, just read through the effects. Also compare the stats between high gold and high jade. And then reevaluate if that's worth 1 multi pull. Per character. That's almost a 2* UR pull.
• (#18) Just a clarification, when I say "low gold, high jade" I mean buy the first lvl (20ish) low gold statue and the highest lvl (lvl 40ish) high jade statue. Only useful during Kenny contest.
• (#19) Unchanged
• (#20) So while I did not recommend the gambling part in the guide itself, I did mention in the comments that I did the gambling myself. However, I quit that several weeks ago after getting 0 tokens from 45 pulls. That was pre soul box release. So even if you had a good jade <-> token ratio, since you need jades for soul box banners and not tokens, you really should not be pulling on the Seireitei gambling treasures.
• (#21 - #23) Unchanged
• (#24) Unchanged, but daily reminder: BIS is a gacha game with an extremly slow development. Patience is not only key, but mandatory.
• (#25 - #28) Unchanged
• (#29) Unchanged, even more so with Soul Box banners. If you're smart about summoning, you would summon for 2* UR units you want with tokens and wait for their Soul Box banner to pull for 4* including their weapon. Guide coming soon (TM).
• (#30) Unchanged, but I can't stress this out enough. PvP is whale territory. Initiative is just an incredibly toxic battle stat. The only F2P RIGHT NOW that somewhat works against a high initiative comp if the power difference is not too big is a full block chance 4 / 6 Black Tortoise comp. And only if you don't get CCd to hell.
• That said, you may make it to cross-server depending on how actively you track your Veteran Battleground placements. However, I can guarantee you that you won't have any fun during the cross-server tournament as F2P. Imagine facing someone with 2.3M battle power while you are lingering around 700k power :⁾
• (#31 - #32) Unchanged

That concludes our review! But there's more we have learned in the past 6 weeks:

• Secure your player ID. I mean I got my account back, but still, something like that should NEVER leave beta.
• Abusing bugs is dumb, bad and toxic for the game and the players. Duh, it's a shame that I have to spell this out, but given how common the 4 BT game-breaking bug was due to several individuals, some even in official positions (and none of those will ever get punished), spreading that garbage, I feel like this needs to be addressed properly. It's sad that people don't see the potential in a good comp any more due to a bug ruining their experience, but it's even more sad that a lot of people did not know about the bug and just took the healing as granted. Don't abuse bugs, report them and let the devs know that game-breaking bugs negatively affect your experience.
• There's potentially no bad R or SR character apart from Birds and some exceptions. Reason for that is that you are more likely to 7* -> Breakthrough (raw power) and awaken their weapon. For example Sasakibe and Nemu are SR Azures with Aizen lvl dmg scaling. More info here
• Even the units currently considered as "bad" most likely have good talents which makes them worth to upgrade to 7*.
• Lisa is currently overpowered given the state of PvP. Long-term she will be ok and everything else compared to her will be underpowered. That is, we currently are at max lvl 77 with around maybe 450k-500k health on a super whaled tanky unit and 300 - 350k health on a super whaled squishy unit. That's like 900 - 1 000k / 600 - 700k HP in PvP. A super whaled Lisa with 60k ATK would deal like 250-350+k damage to those units. That's good dmg, but it's needed. And we are talking about super whaled units.
• Regular human achievable units will currently be around 40k ATK (Lisa) vs 350k HP / 700k PvP HP (Tank) or 250k / 500k HP (squishy). Lisa would deal something around 130 - 200k to those units.
• This is for lvl 77 orange +1. Imagine what it would look like on lvl 100 red+4. HP scales way faster than ATK and ATK scalings on most damages are not comparable to 100% HP gain. Lisa damage is required to keep damage orientated comps in the game.
• Vice versa, Kensei will only become more broken. He can easily get 100% block chance, he does not need to attack, he heals % max health on block which is like on every attack, his rage is in the same dmg group as Aizen and he has a taunt (even if low chance, but still). This unit is pretty much the definition of immortality. Plus, he does not need a soul hall. This unit is flexible with 100% block rate without his BT soul hall.
• Oasis (company behind BIS) actually tried to deliver and adapt to f2p / dolphins. At least sometimes. They also listen to feedback. At least sometimes. That's something we haven't seen in the past from their other games, so that's a great improvement.
• Unscheduled maintenances are a thing (my ass) :⁾

That's it for now, I will update this analysis later on when the new banner drops.
Edit: Done