The way I miss you

Someday maybe you'll know,
The way I missed you,
I wish you knew,
How I had planned more days for us,
I wish you knew it was a mile I wanted you to walk,
I wish you knew the sun was yet to set,
I wish you knew how I loved the way your eyes met mine with passion,
I wish you could wait for love,
For the real deal often doesn't come so rapid,
The symphony of love has yet to blossom,
The color had yet to dye,
I wish you knew the respect I had for us,
And I wish you could understand how I missed you,
It is a cruel fate at hand,
For departure must be our doom,
All I wanted was for you to care too,
All I wanted was not another limerence,
All I wanted was for you to run the 500 miles for me and reassure me that this was it;

Someday I hope you understand how I missed you in ways I loved you, in the tiny things that mattered,
Someday it is;

Why we can't stop playing Candy Crush? The addictive 'Feedback'

This is a continuation to the previous blog "Is 'Addictive Technology' really making us healthier, social & more ?". This is the 2nd followup of A brief from the book 'Irresistible' by Adam Alter




Candy Crush - We just can't stop playing, can we? It generated more than $600,000 in revenue during its peak in 2013. The downloads range between 1/2 a billion to a billion people (surprisingly the majority are women, which is rare in previous such hypes). This too is a prime example in the phenomenon we will discuss today - feedback.

What Is Feedback?

Here our feedback mainly refers to things like 'a facebook like/reaction', 'the juice and chime when we complete a line on candy crush', 'comments on an article we write', 'when there is a sound on the screen while we play video games' etc. Different forms of feedbacks have been incorporated in the various virtual environments we operate in our digital lives. Most of them unconsciously control us.

Our journey to feedback has been very fundamental to us. Ever noticed a little child press all the buttons in the lift and brim after that? Feedback. Some of us still enjoy doing it. That is exactly why in marketing we have 'buttons' because they work and it is fundamental to our human nature. Previous campaigns by TNT Television, Reddit and many more have gone viral with this being their major success. Some campaigns we'll take up below.

The Pigeon Experiment

A pigeon experiment revealed the amount of dopamine released was much more when the reward was unpredictable. The pigeons seemed to peck frivolously (twice as often) when the reward (food) was unexpected. They pecked feverishly when the reward was success at 50-70% times (unpredictable) vs when the reward was once in every ten pecks(predictable). Pigeon gamblers much?
[Experiment by Michael Zeiler, psychologist]

The Reddit Campaign

Reddit posted a blog with button along with a timer. It said once the post was 10 minutes old the button would start the timer for 60 seconds and everytime a user clicked on the button, the timer would reset to 60 seconds. If all of Reddit users clicked the button, this would run for merely 66years. Rad I say!

Thousands of visitors clicked the button inspite of the fact this button had no value add in return. Users were shown different coloured badges for clicking between certain time frame eg. purple badge was shown to people who clicked between 52 to 60 seconds of timer count. This had people forming camps based on the badge colour which they wore with honor. Millions of people were bonded by feedback (a button).

The Facebook Like Button

This is the new gen crack cocaine ! Yes......welcome to being addicted to hitting that little button each time you are scrolling the digital addiction site. This too came about with an experiment with 200 million users at the time. Users could get real-time feedback on their posts, thoughts, photos with this little 'like button'. People like the pigeons were driven to the unpredictability of the 'like button', you never know how many likes it can garner. A zero like post is like a private humiliation, a social condemnation which means you either didn't have enough online friends or worse your online friends weren't impressed. This was so successful, it was followed by a startup called 'Lovematically'. It automatically liked posts that went through its feed and this was free. You no longer had to work for the real-time feedback. It went out so viral, instagram had get it shut down eventually after 2 hours from its major Valentine Day campaign under the 'Socail Network's terms of use'.

The Casino Case (Curious?)

The casinos use a 'loss disguised as win' psychology for gamblers to stick around. The longer the gambler is present in front of the screen / table of play, the more the casino makes money from it. The human gets tired after a string of losses and finally quits. So they measure a saturation point in each of these gamblers and at the saturation they manipulate the outcome to a 'loss disguised as win' and then the gambler keeps playing more and losing more. Loss disguised as win could simply be a coupon to free drinks at the casino or some credit to play more. This can merely be a fraction of the gamblers money invested in the play. Eventually the gambler's mind thinks he/she won a small bet at the 10th try, however logically it lost 9 tries and won a small fraction of it on the 10th.

The Candy Crush Saga

If you've played previous simple UI games, you may have noticed, making rows of similar blocks were a pattern in some old video games too. They didn't make the hype Candy Crush did. The reason is the little juice that differentiates candy crush from the others. When you form a matching line in candy crush saga, a sound with a flash of light and sometimes words of praise by Wizard of Oz are heard. This is the feedback element here.

The Virtual Reality Drug

Virtual Reality is going mainstream and should impact our lives majorly in a few years. It comes with some benefits but it also comes with some risks. The risks of us never wanting to leave a world as perfect as VR and stepping into the real one. Why live in a real world with flawed people when we can live in a perfect world that feels real ?

To be or not to be

There is a time you will ponder upon all the times which 'could be',
You will think 'what if I had done that',
'What if we had tried that',
And between these will you find yourself torn,
Torn because they are the midway options that never can see the light,
We simply haven't done it and time has moved on,
We cannot go back, we must live with the 'what if',
And in many a such day will you hit upon another 'what if'
With patterns similar to that in the past,
As if a soulmate were made just for you,
You dance to the rhythm of chemistry,
In ways untold and unheard of,
Like the ones in novels,
And your palms sweat,
For you do not believe you had a chance at love after all;

So you take a step back,
Think again,
What matters the most,
Is the spark worth the time?
Is it worth weeks of hormones rushed?
Will this be another 'What If'?
And our atoms at once recite,
They must want to see this fight,
To see what could be for once,
To give it that little push of trust,
To finally allow yourself to make a mistake,
And then the question hits us hard,
To be or not to be ?

The Absence Of 'Tears'

Ever heard the last goodbyes hurt the most ?
Some of us are petrified, so much, we do not embrace the last courtesy to goodbye......for what is the meaning of the last wavering moment when real thing is just gone? Oh but wait, does that mean it didn't hurt ? Oh, you mean you didn't see us cry. We embrace the cold exterior because what good could tears do to such excruciating pain? It's right there, moving with us, we never lose it, its like a baggage we carry around. The pain baggage.....it gets bigger by the day. And yes it counts, you count, every moment counts. So we cannot embrace the last goodbye courtesy, we leave for good. We cannot face losing you again, even if it meant for a few more seconds.

Do not think 'the absence of tears' doesn't hurt. Oh, it hurts like hell. I wish I could say but there's nothing on earth to say what it feels like. It is no small task of having to carry a dormant volcano amongst ourselves and fake the smiles. But, I do it well, really well.


I see the birds on the horizon fade,
Into a 'V' line as they fly homeward in shade,
The sky is turning a beautiful red,
The blue sunkissed into a raging orange,
The chirping gets louder by the minute,
And the wind gushes across my hair,
The weather is still hot and humid,
And yet I feel calmness in the company I keep,
There is peace in good company,
There is peace in knowing love;

My legs are wavering,
They'd like to just laze around,
In the greens of this open space,
To become a part of this vastness,
And yet the clock must time well,
We must return to what calls us back,
The warm homes we love,
I only wish I could take this back,
I do take back a little piece of my mind,
The memory etched of a small short ride;

Dating.....or not ?

This one's gonna be a book someday and maybe soon. But right now, I'm just gonna help people not get used.

Here's the thing. India doesn't date. They exploit. Why ? Happens to have a mixed hypocritical mindset hanging between finding love through dating and arranged marriages.

Arranged marriages are getting a good deal through online portals or match makers. These happen to be good deals because of the seriousness of its approach (parents are the ones that scan). It's a good thing if you can see beyond mind blocks. But that us hard because all of us were patterned to think we'd have our love stories someday. Perpetually, that is so not true.

On the other hand, there are a few dating options online and they are an absolute no no. Why ? Well, the people on it are looking for 'ego boost', 'revound', 'flings' etc. Are they looking for a life partner? Literally no. The ones who are looking for life partners are actual on more serious sites. Why isn't dating serious? Well, the so called modern generation in india dates in complete privacy. They have secret dates who sometimes get married too but that's pretty rare. People happen to have very bad amounts of experience with the opposite sex because of poor ratios in plenty fields eg. Engineering. So, this is why they date.....to be able to gain some experience. Obviously, it ends up getting twisted.

Lastly, the younger generation is too insecure to even be in love. Why? Because they don't even know what to focus on. Some will even  come up with ideas about long term as 'kinky'. Well. ....priority much?

Maybe it'll be someday a little better. But right now, I'd say.....Stay away. And if you're on any of these places for very innocent reasons, you can test the waters but I suggest you keep you boundaries. You are the only protector of yourself. This ground is not a good place.....instead gp out,dance....maybe sing. Do things you've wanted to do. I found great guys simply at a badminton match over any of these stupid dating sites. Makes sense, the secure individuals with healthy social circles were very rarely on those sites.

So why waste time? Time is money....you know and memories

The Soulmate

I've read like a ton of documents on this, I've even been through some of the logical deductions and why we feel this way kind of thing. Basically, I only ended up with some ideas of my own. We all have a picture of our perfect one in our heads. Mine is fairly realistic, there's no type, just a divine bond. Yes, probably, not so realistic. Well, what are dreams made of anyway?

So, sometimes, unlike many other times, some people get you. Weird, very weird. I consider myself a total maniac who looks and does all the normal stuff. Well, there are just some faces that go unnoticed and I like it that way. Apparently, there are people who can read that. To be very honest, this is intimidating like hell. And to such people, who take the effort, this is for you

(The significance of this image lies in water and fire)


I'd probably have told you this,
If we'd meet on a setting sun,
And I wish to be able to do so someday,
When I have a little more words,
When I'm feeling a little less rushed,
When I can feel my heart beat not so fast;

It's but a weary day,
On which I'll take that step,
Before that I hope there will be many more suns to set,
For this thing, this scary vulnerability is shaking me,
In ways I never knew I could,
And I'm getting to know a new me,
I do hope you'll stay,
After I've healed,
It wouldn't be easy to let go,
But I promise I couldn't force,
Even if you were my forever;

I hope I can swim through this,
In fact, I hope we both can,
It would a lovely journey to see,
Both of us emerging victorious on the other side 'Together';
I hope we make it 'Soulmate'

Oh....not anymore. I think we just did fine. Time is such a friend, always shows us our true colors