Comment by killerstorm

There's an unresolved tension within the article:

* some parts of it imply it's about higher intensity, 'bigger' dopamine hits * while other parts talk about commodification, i.e. making these 'dopamine hits' as cheaply as possible, with as little other substance as possible

Not the same thing. There's a connection - reducing 'substance' make it more 'pure' dopamine, also there's some loudness war between different sources. But still, in the end people generally don't feel anything intense when scrolling tiktok, it's just enough to grab attention.

I guess more direct analogy with fracking might work better: it squeezes dopamine hit out of things which normally don't warrant attention.