So are pages, if you're on an enshittified attention-economy website

I've never thought about it like that but you're right. I definitely have that same burst of serotonin from finding a great post that you get when you get a rare.

How the scrollbar works says nothing about what's on the page. You could make similar claims about web pages in general — you never really know if you'll get what you were looking for. If anything, having to click "next" to try again would make it more like a loot box. But still not much like a loot box, usually.

Pages are so much better than infinite scroll

and ye, fuck youtube for making 80% of results be shorts, I'm not looking for this bullshit

There is only one headline I'm looking for 🪦

Wow, this might be beyond the scope of a showerthought meme because you've got my gears turning. This actually makes sense -- design is a series of decisions at the end of the day, never thought about it in the interaction element and intention sense. Algorithms of doom fucking everything up, puts this interaction element into dark pattern territory.

About that, i have "infinite scrolling" off in Voyager but it doesn't paginate, still infinite scroll.

I think it's more useful to think of it in terms of a Skinner box. Loot boxes, gacha, and most other mechanics in modern games are all variants of operant conditioning, and doomscrolling is a different, but equally insidious, manifestation thereof. The way the Skinner Box gets you is by giving you little, consistent hits of pleasure, keeping you performing a rote act, and so you get conditioned to perform that act continuously, even after you no longer derive pleasure, or after the actual reward has been removed. This is precisely what doomscrolling is.

This suggests that I expect to win or even gain anything when I open any social media site/app.

yup, doomscrolling is basically waiting for something alluring to grab our attention