Content warning: mentions of pornography. Some lewd content is shown, but nothing explicit.
"Addiction alloys" is a term I'm using to describe how different online addictions1 cross-promote to move you around in the addiction ecosystem.
Examples
Gambling websites are constantly displayed on top of short-form content. This is as a result of a relentless affiliate marketing campaign, where views on content containing the website's logo gets you paid.
Stake pioneered this approach, but has rapidly spread throughout the e-casino world.
Gambling websites have a porn-specific affiliate campaign, through in-video adverts, and porn stars wearing site merchandise. This is for both independent creators and big studios.
Screenshot from a Brazzers video uploaded to PornHub, showing a gambling app being used.
Thumbnail from an amateur porn creator's video, dressed in 1Win apparel.
Individual porn creators promote themselves by being actors in other creator's content, such as comedy skits.
Individual porn creators promote themselves by creating short-form content, ranging from non-sexual (potentially with flattering clothing), to soft-core pornography.
Individual porn creators run affiliate marketing schemes. Here are some examples:
Any self-respecting OnlyFans star relies on a network of accounts to spray content across people’s feeds. Synthetic attention can evolve into organic popularity. Every piece of content on a TikTok feed bears the scars of this constant, hidden struggle over the memes of production.
The vendors of compulsive behaviours have more avenues than ever to find people. A significant portion of modern day social media is the combination of these compulsions to create super addictive content.
The key difference here is the deliberate blending of promotion into the very content itself. It used to be that these compulsions would be seperate, with demarcated advertisements being the only cross promotion. But now, the purveyors of them have realised, and capitalised on the value of strong integrations.
Watching Drake is one thing, but watching him and Adin Ross attempt to win big on Stake, live on Kick? Combine this with the parasocial aspect of this relationship, you've created a potent drug. With social media shorts, you can spread taster shots to a wide population.
Every time I've tried to write this piece, Paul Graham's article on addiction has been very salient to me. The concentrations have happened, and now we're mixing them together to try and create stronger venom.
The solutions aren't much different to Paul Graham's piece: individually, we need to take cautious attention to what we expend our energy on, and collectively, it will take years to figure this out.
Compulsions, addictons, or just "things you wish you'd stop doing, but your mind is now configured to do on autopilot", really doesn't matter to me. ↩︎
This specific example stars Riley Reid, who was listed by CNBC as one of the biggest porn stars in the world for 2014, 2015 and 2016. ↩︎
