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Hi, everyone and welcome back to Happy Hour, 欢迎回来酒馆. Hi, 安澜.

Hi, Lulu. Why the long face?

I don't know. It's just... I'm so helpless. It's so much like it's so difficult to feel joy in life now. Let me ask you a question, 安澜, do you remember that share uncomplicated joy of getting a new toy as a kid or like that excitement of waiting for your favorite cartoon to be on TV, now compare that to how you feel scrolling through endless short-form videos or getting a new notification, does it hit the same?

Well, I don't really go through short-form videos, but I do know what you mean. There's an idea of instant gratification. It feels like we need something bigger. We need a bigger and bigger hit just to feel a small buzz.

So for example, that new phone is exciting for a day, you just bought a new phone or you buy a new game. It's really exciting for a day and then...

It's exciting for a day for you. For me, it's like 5minutes and that’s it.

It just feels a little bit like how joy meter has been broken.

So let's talk about our joy meter, shall we? 我们来说说我们的快乐阈值. Have you ever heard of a concept called happiness threshold or the idea of hedonic set point or hedonic treadmill?

Well, I've heard of happiness threshold, and hedonic, I can recognize what that means like hedonism is sheer pleasure. It is the pursuit of sheer pleasure.

The whole idea. Happiness threshold is that we somehow have a like a baseline level of happiness. 我们有一个快乐基线, 有一个阈值, and after any positive or negative event was sort of returned to it and hedonic treadmill you know like the treadmill we run on in the gym.

You run on a treadmill?

Yeah, that's not the point. You know what treadmills are. 跑步机

Yeah, I use a treadmill.

It's kind of like you walk on it, but you're not getting anywhere. So that is the whole idea, it feels like in order to feel increasingly happy, we feel like we must acquire more, achieve more, experience more, buy more and get more of these stimuli. But like walking on or running on a treadmill, we spend a lot of energy trying to do that, but don't actually get anywhere.

No, so what do you think that is?

I think that goes in the two key modes of gratification. You've heard of instant gratification and delayed gratification, right?

Well yeah. So instant gratification is the immediate fulfillment of a desire. So you get that hit of dopamine from a sort of ...one click purchase or a viral video.

Of a cat.

Yeah, exactly. It’s like you press it and then you’re immediately happy for a very, very short period of time.

You know those videos I sent you.

Yes, yeah.

But delayed gratification usually requires the ability to resist an immediate reward for a more valuable one later, like saving money, studying for an exam or training for a marathon.

So it's like our brain has two systems. One, you got the toddler, you got the little kid who says I want it now, I want it now. Then you got the wise grandparents saying good things come to those who wait.

Right now our entire world is designed to feed the toddler.

Actually now the grandparents would say enjoy the moment.

Well, exactly.

So I think it's that dopamine loop that we crave, it’s that neurochemical cycle of craving action reward and then afterwards craving again.

Exactly. Yeah. You get into this sort of dopamine loop. So basically you crave something, you get it and then you want it again. So craving, action, reward, craving.

Yeah, have you felt like your threshold has been sort of raised.

To a certain extent, yeah. So for example you know I love reading. Now I remember when I was a kid, I would once a week go to the library and get out a book or get out a couple of books and I felt really really excited about that. But now I can just buy any book I want online or download any book I want. Now on my iPad, I've got over 1,000 books that I'm never gonna read. I'm never gonna have time to read.

Same here.

But I can't stop myself. So for example, if I see that book has come out, I have to buy it. Even though in the past, I will just be happy with one or two books. But now every time I read one book, I end up either buying or downloading ten books.

Yeah, but that joy is just not the same.

Oh, it’s not the same, no.

This is what I said. I love reading as well. I love buying books, and every time I get a new book, now the joy only lasts for about 5 minutes, I flip through and that’s it.

Yeah, exactly.

So let's dive a little bit deeper into the why. Why are we like that? I blame pop culture and the whole instant economy.

Well, yeah.

First of all, our environment is like an engine designed for raising the happiness thresholds. Look at the whole idea of FOMO, fear of missing out. That's the whole idea.

This whole culture on social media where everyone's highlight reel you see them living a great life, doing all these exciting things. And this pushes you to seek more, suddenly your quiet everyday life just isn't going to cut it. You have to ski, you have to climb to the top of the Himalayas. You have to... whatever...

Exactly. It's like if you look at someone's moments, you feel like the entire world is skydiving, which I really can't believe. Or everyone is going skiing which again I really can't believe. I live in Beijing, it's not that easy to go skiing.

They usually go to other places, other countries even, to ski. This is like the experience, but what about consumption. With consumption we have all of these influencers filming the unboxing videos.

Oh, is that when they get lots of products and they open them up in front of the camera?

Unboxing is just opening probably one or two, but you have the haul video, which is what you described...

Oh, ok.

这种大开箱. Usually they will open an insane amount of things. For example they have the summer wardrobe haul video.

So it's not so much about focusing on one item. It's just a way of showing like how many you have.

Yeah, you notice that unboxing video, although it started off, I think innocent enough, they want people to feel the whole experience. It's an experiential video because maybe the audience cannot really buy that, or they are not buying that at the moment. But gradually you realize that this kind of videos they kind of glorify the moment of acquisition. They focus on getting it not using it, especially not long-term using.

Exactly. So one of the things I've noticed as well is that nowadays if you go on Netflix, you can press the button to skip the credits. If you can't even stand like ten twenty seconds of an introduction or the credits. You can just press a button and then go straight into the story.

Yeah, and also obviously purchase...we want the one click purchasing, we want the same day delivery.

Oh yeah, also dating apps as well, you know the idea... swipe left, swipe right and so on.

You sound like you're very used to that idea.

No, not really, no.

But this all gives us the illusion of that we always have infinite choices in everything, so that no one wants to wait anymore.

No, nobody can stand waiting.

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文稿校对：Sally & Jenny

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