Intentionally Addicting Facebook

Facebook, observes Jess Zimmerman writing in The Guardian,

is testing a “buy” button that will allow you to instantly purchase anything you see in an ad or post. This will eventually lead to all of us chain-smoking while we feed endless dollars into a Facebook-themed slot machine.

She describes a vacation in Las Vegas in which everything one could possibly want was provided in the same hotel, thereby making sure you didn’t go outside and that you did spend all your money − and more money than you intended to spend − in the casino. You can even smoke inside public buildings in Las Vegas, saving the casinos from the possible losses following cigarette breaks outside: a) people aren’t gambling when they’re outside smoking, and b) they might suddenly think to wander off.

She continues:

[T]he company’s goal is for you to leave Facebook as little as possible, to pledge your money and loyalty and personal information to Facebook in exchange for enough convenience that to give it up completely sounds almost impossible. The increased convenience helps you out a little – it’s convenient, after all – but it can also make you a sucker. We’re often inclined to go for the path of least resistance, and Facebook is sculpting the paths that it wants you to take so that they’re broad and smooth (and, not incidentally, so that they lead you in a circle that, when possible, never leaves Facebook).

I’d never heard of her before I saw this article, but she’s got two more entertaining observations on The Guardian‘s site: There’s a fitness tracker for vaginas, subtitled “Quantifying your life has gone too far,” and Facebook’s study got it wrong, explaining “seeing our ‘friends’ happy can make us sad.”