At this point i just feel creator platforms, and especially tiktok, are becoming casinos for aspiring creators, giving you just enough hope you could make it to keep you playing Not talking about infinite scroll / dopamine etc, but more the creator side, with random huge wins, near-misses, highly visible winners, and now the ability to literally buy more chips Same pattern for most of my creator friends: most of their posts get 500-700 views, then one randomly does 500k, then back to 700 views for a few months. I think it’s a deliberate trick (ie intermittent rewards). You’re much more likely to keep going after that than if every post had done 20k. You’ve now seen that the jackpot is possible for you, and every mediocre post becomes a near-miss rather than evidence you should stop. The most addicted creators I know are the ones who went properly viral once and have been trying to recreate it ever since The feed is also only showing you the jackpot winners. A random 16yo gets 800k followers in 2 weeks, an anonymous account makes $1M, some guy quits his job 6 months after starting Youtube etc. Your feed basically shows you every jackpot without ever showing the millions who tried the exact same thing and got 600 views. And as I wrote yesterday, ordinary winners are probably even better, because seeing someone apparently no smarter / more talented than you win makes you think “fuck, I could probably do that too” And now platforms are increasingly realising they can sell the chips too. $20 to boost a post, $50 to reach another 10k people, premium accounts, analytics, creator tools etc. Doesn’t really register as spending when in your head the upside is potentially millions + fame + quitting your job. Especially once you’ve already had that one post do 300k and start thinking “maybe this one just needs a push” Also don’t think the huge creators are necessarily the best customers long term. If nothing ever works you’ll eventually leave, if you become massive you start building businesses / distribution elsewhere and become less dependent on the platform. Someone stuck in between though, few thousand followers, one 300k post, maybe made some money once, permanently feeling like they’re 2 good posts away… that person can probably play for years Casinos have understood this forever, think platforms are just starting to realise how insanely monetisable ambition can be