Introducing: The Serotonin Slot Machine
People know about dopamine. Slot machines, social media. Dopamine machine. Wheee. Keep pushing the random-algorithm button.
But people also notice that if they stay on social media too long, they don’t actually end up happy. Why not? If they’re getting all that dopamine, why do they leave their computer feeling bad instead of good?
One reason is that it’s a bit unnatural to get a lot of one neurotransmitter in isolation, instead of a whole cocktail. In real life, many of these chemicals tend to arrive together. Dopamine often shows up alongside serotonin, for example. But with something as deliberately engineered as a social media feed, you can get a lot of dopamine without much serotonin. Let me explain.
Dopamine is not actually “pleasure,” and neither is any other neurotransmitter. Each one does something specific.
Dopamine is less “pleasure” and more anticipation and pursuit. It’s a neurotransmitter that fires strongly in the brain’s reward prediction system. It spikes when something is better than expected, and it dips when something is worse. It teaches you what to chase. It’s the forward lean of your mind, the itch of possibility, the lever before the candy drops.
If you graphed dopamine across time for a little “reward event,” it might look something like this:
First, you’re at baseline: just existing, scrolling, nothing special.
Then you see a cue that maybe something good is coming (a notification dot). Your dopamine spikes before you know what it is.
When the actual reward arrives (the like, the message, the “win”), dopamine doesn’t spike much more. It often slides back toward baseline, especially once your brain has learned to predict it.
If nothing good comes, dopamine dips below baseline for a bit. That’s the disappointment valley.
We can get dopamine in a variety of ways: food, sex, shopping, hearing good news, getting a like or a compliment, new music, new games, new places, learning something interesting, going down a rabbit hole, exercise, sunlight, music you love, good sleep, even just moving your body after being still, play, flirting, joking, helping someone and feeling that little “helper’s high.”
So we know how to get dopamine. But dopamine is not the only feel‑good neurotransmitter that exists.
What about endorphins? Those heroin-esque painkillers from working out? What about oxytocin—that feeling of affectionate warmth when you pet a cat in the street?
And what about serotonin—that feeling of contentment from being where you need to be?
Yes indeed, what about serotonin? Why isn’t there a serotonin slot machine?
Serotonin is important because when serotonin is paired with dopamine, it feels really good after you stop the activity. Imagine playing video games with your friends for five hours, versus playing video games by yourself for five hours. In the first scenario, you leave the event glowing. In the second scenario, you may feel good, or you may feel pretty bad—it largely depends on how well you did in the game, and whether you accomplished exactly what you wanted to.
Serotonin is like the opposite of humiliation. It is the opposite of being defeated in a fight. It is the opposite of feeling low‑status and trapped with no way out.
So if you’ve “failed” (for example, you only accomplished 50% of what you wanted in the game), but your friends are there and do not hate you for failing at Ornstein and Smough for the 70th time, you can still leave that session feeling really good. The serotonin from social safety and acceptance cushions the dopamine ups and downs.
Dopamine is like waiting to see what you get, getting something good, and getting that sharp little hit.
Serotonin is more like standing tall after a win. It’s the sense of “I’m not nothing. I have some status. I’m allowed to exist here.”
Lobsters feel these feelings too; it’s a primitive system. Their posture and behavior change based on something like serotonin levels—win enough fights, and you move through the world differently.
Imagine starting off the day making a phone call, and on the other end, exactly what you wanted to happen ends up happening. No fireworks, but something in you straightens. Maybe this is what having a certain kind of assistant is like: the point is not just to get tasks done, but to start your day feeling high‑status by being able to tell somebody to do something and have it happen. Then this serotonin boost lets you do other tasks during the day in a better way.
Serotonin helps with general emotional stability and mental flexibility. It is a good neurotransmitter to have.
Building IKEA furniture increases serotonin. So does successfully navigating bureaucracy. Honestly, if you’re over 30 and still alive, that’s pretty good. Pretty high status already.
Serotonin is usually increased in the long game. You typically have to do a hard task that increases your social status or competence to feel a serotonin increase. But if you’re low in serotonin, then doing those tasks feels really hard. Catch‑22.
Just as there are dopamine slot machines everywhere with social media, there are anti‑serotonin slot machines everywhere too.
Getting an email that something you didn’t want automatically renewed, and now you’ve lost some money, and you certainly can’t get a refund because it was in the terms you signed—this is a small humiliation. There is nothing you can do about it. It can chip away at your hard‑won serotonin just by checking your email in the morning.
And so serotonin is easily lost and hard‑won.
One upside of serotonin that can be used as a potential hack is that serotonin increases when you remember ways that you are already winning. The memories count.
It also responds to evidence. This is why prompts that ask for evidence of lower status, such as advertisements that implicitly ask if you have sufficiently bad skin that you actually need this new lotion that they are selling you — lower your serotonin.
One prototype may include journaling prompts, or just quotes, in your Facebook feed or Youtube feed, so that in your “feed” you are asked to take the action of remembering ways you are already winning. Or more pictures that you really like that remind you that you are already high status and doing cool things being sent to you in your email to look at alongside other things that may deplete your serotonin.
A true Serotonin Slot Machine, if used alongside of the Dopamine Slot Machines or in the same spaces at them, may do a lot to increase people’s moods after doing things like checking emails or general online activity. It may leave people feeling more balanced and able to do difficult social, personal, and emotional activities in their lives.