You aren't escaping to a better life. You are escaping from the inability to enjoy a normal one. Every escape from Pleasure Planet begins with a crash.
Soon, you can’t feel anything at all. This is —the clinical inability to experience pleasure from activities usually found enjoyable, like reading a book, having a conversation, or finishing a work project.
You are that hero. And your countdown is already in the negative.
The difference is choice . On Pleasure Planet, you do not choose when to stop. The algorithm chooses for you. Off the planet, you touch the screen and put it down. You eat the cookie and feel satisfied. You watch one episode and go to bed.
Remember the movie The Matrix ? When Neo takes the red pill, he doesn't wake up in a penthouse. He wakes up naked, hairless, floating in slime, connected to a tube. Reality is disgusting at first.
In the summer of 2023, I deleted Instagram, stopped ordering takeout, and slept on a hardwood floor for three weeks. My friends thought I had joined a cult. In reality, I was conducting a desperate experiment. I call it my
On Pleasure Planet, we reversed the equation. Now, you get dopamine for zero effort . Swipe up: dopamine. Click a thumbnail: dopamine. Receive a notification: dopamine.
