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You’re Not Addicted to Content, You’re Starving for Information

2025-06-27 · letter vlog · Hank · 14:21 · watch on YouTube

Topic: Internet & YouTube (also: Health) · mode: Personal essay · tags: self promotion

Answering John's 'Am I Cigarettes?', Hank argues the cigarette metaphor is dangerous because information, unlike nicotine, can be good; he proposes food instead: after millennia of scarcity we face an abundance of hyperpalatable information, personalized by platforms, which education alone will not fix, and he hopes simple stories exposing the manipulators will help, as with smoking.

What is said

The parts of the video and what is said in each (★ — how much it matters to the video).

00:00:00 — John took Hank's 'Am I Cigarettes?' idea; Hank summarizes it and calls the cigarette metaphor a dangerous simplifier

  • ★★ Hank says 'Am I Cigarettes?' was on his own list of video ideas and John stole it; he forgives him, having stolen plenty from John, and John did it better. (playful) — 00:00:00 · John Green
  • ★★ Hank has never smoked a cigarette: he was so scared of addiction as a kid, which he finds wild given how he uses the social internet. — 00:00:00
  • ★★ Hank summarizes John's idea: the social internet may be quite bad for people, and at some point it starts using you, as cigarettes hack humans into users. — 00:00:29 · John Green, social media
  • ★★★ Hank thinks the cigarette metaphor is dangerous: a simplifier, and one must ask what a simplification obscures, which here is a lot. (hedged) — 00:00:58
  • ★★ Hank says a video titled 'we don't use TikTok, TikTok uses us' would be easy and get many views; it is sometimes true and might even do some good. — 00:00:58 · TikTok

00:01:27 — Why the metaphor fails: nicotine has no value, but the core of the social internet is information

  • ★★ Hank says claims that cigarettes provide utility are BS: a world where nicotine never evolved would be better, with less suffering. — 00:01:27
  • ★★★ Hank says the core of the social internet is not an addictive chemical but information, content, which he loves: books, music, art, cat videos, video essays, podcasts. — 00:02:06 · social media
  • ★★★ Cigarettes cannot be positive but information can, so the cigarette metaphor cannot lead toward solutions; Hank offers food instead. — 00:02:06

00:02:35 — Food: from scarcity to hyperpalatable abundance, why calorie information failed, limited agency, cultural change and GLP-1 drugs

  • ★★ Hank says scarcity of calories has been the human story: malnutrition has likely played a role in more human deaths than any single pathogen or weapon. (hedged) — 00:02:35
  • ★★ Hank says the first American generation that mostly did not have to worry about getting enough food is still alive. — 00:02:35 · United States
  • ★★ Hank says food shortages were common up to the 1940s, extremely common in the 1930s, and unavoidable in the 1880s. — 00:03:07
  • ★★★ Hank says we moved from food scarcity to ultra-abundance, with companies competing to make the most delightful, engaging, cheap food: better than malnutrition, but with new problems. — 00:03:07
  • ★★ Companies optimize for what people will buy, not for nutrition, so Hank finds it hard not to overeat while still missing the fiber, vitamins and protein he needs. — 00:03:36
  • ★★ Hank, who would eat Nashville hot chicken at every meal, says a hot chicken sandwich isn't cigarettes: cigarettes just deliver nicotine, the sandwich is mostly food. (playful) — 00:04:05
  • ★★ Hank is on the fence about sugary drinks like Coca-Cola: calories but not really food; he might prefer a world without them, juices included, since juice is soda. (playful, hedged) — 00:04:05
  • ★★★ Cheap, hyperpalatable food has left many people with unhealthy relationships with food and health problems never faced before. — 00:04:42
  • ★★★ Hank says we long wrongly thought calorie information, like the calories in Doritos, would make people healthier; nutrition is complex, nobody knows their calories, and tracking them is a full-time hobby. — 00:05:12
  • ★★★ Hank says, as he thinks researchers agree, the solution is mostly avoiding food designed to be extremely tasty, since otherwise it is very hard not to overeat. — 00:05:41
  • ★★ Avoiding it is hard not only because Doritos and Pop-Tarts are tasty and cheap but because too much food is a new problem with no cultural structures to handle it. — 00:05:41
  • ★★★ Hank says we have less agency than we think, citing the elephant rider metaphor: the body is the elephant and consciousness the rider, and sometimes the elephant will not go. — 00:06:10
  • ★★ Luckily humans are cultural and build cultural tools when needed, though it takes a long time to get good at a differently shaped world; it seems to be happening with food. — 00:06:10
  • ★★ Part of the change will be cultural: a vibe that ultra-processed foods are gross or cringe, something you would not allow in your home. — 00:06:39
  • ★★ Hank was raised on Pop-Tarts; he still wants them but has not had one in a long time. — 00:06:39
  • ★★ For people already deeply affected, Hank says GLP-1 agonists are basically miracle drugs, though some will argue. — 00:07:08
  • ★★★ Hank thinks the long-term solution will be a turn away from foods engineered to hack our brains, toward more food-shaped foods. — 00:07:08

00:07:38 — Information abundance as food: hyperpalatable information, why fact-checking cannot scale, the personalized Dorito

  • ★★ Hank says even tasty food that isn't ultra-processed is too good for us, but the benefits of solving this are too large for us not to get there. — 00:07:38
  • ★★★ Humans lived for millions of years with information scarcity; the last generation that worried about too little information, Hank's parents, is still alive, and now there is information abundance. — 00:08:07
  • ★★★ Information sellers compete to make it hyperpalatable, which often makes it worse for you: easy to consume only what you like, lacking what the brain needs for a useful model of the world. — 00:08:07 · attention economy
  • ★★ Empty-calorie content is mostly fine, but some is actively harmful, the trans fats of information: outrage bait and conspiracy theories that alienate you from your communities. — 00:08:36
  • ★★★ As with nutrition labels, educating people about good and bad information helps but cannot work alone: no one fact-checks a fact they agree with. — 00:09:05
  • ★★ Nobody can check every fact met on the internet; there are far too many. (playful) — 00:09:35
  • ★★★ Unlike food, the internet can make a personalized Dorito for each person that learns what they like and morphs, growing worse for them down a misinformation rabbit hole as long as they keep eating. — 00:09:35 · recommender system
  • ★★★ This is very scary, but it is not cigarettes: the Dorito is still food, information that can be valuable or harmful. — 00:10:04
  • ★★ Hank would not prefer a world where the social internet was never invented, though there are days, and bets many felt that way about books during the Reformation. (playful) — 00:10:04
  • ★★ Brilliant people design ever more appealing Doritos and we are at the stage where we are bad at this, but Hank has seen signs we may be getting better. (hedged) — 00:10:04
  • ★★★ Lessons from food: companies make things appealing, even addictive; we have less control than we imagine; giving agency away a little is fine, completely is damaging and cringe. — 00:10:52 · TikTok

00:11:21 — Shining a light on manipulators: the Florida hospital ad; the social internet is food, much of it junk

  • ★★★ Hank thinks what worked with cigarettes, and is working some with food, is shining a light on the people who want to manipulate us. — 00:11:21
  • ★★ Hank recalls a TV ad in Florida from his childhood: businessmen around a dying man lament losing their most loyal customer, then the camera pans to a young person in the hallway. — 00:11:21 · Florida
  • ★★★ That is the best messaging: platforms, foods, creators and leaders that hack your brain and keep you scared, angry and superior to control you are the businessmen in that hospital room. — 00:11:50
  • ★★★ Hank thinks people will eventually see such content not just as junk food but as manipulative and cringe, treating us as tools, though it will take a long time. — 00:12:19

  • ★★★ Hank tells John the social internet isn't cigarettes but food: much is junk food or worse and making us sick, but much is nutritious, and we must learn to tell which. — 00:12:19 · John Green, social media

    “the social internet isn't cigarettes, it is food.”

  • ★★ Hank says there are ways to speed this up, recalling how successfully America decreased smoking. — 00:12:46 · United States

  • ★★★ The stories must be simpler than lessons in fact-checking and information literacy: a simple story of people trying to manipulate us into being their tools. — 00:12:46

00:13:15 — Closing on simple stories, sign-off, and the discounted mystery socks plug

  • ★ Hank admits this was not a video of simple stories; a more effective TLDR version exists, and he leaves it to everyone else. (playful) — 00:13:15
  • ★★ The Awesome Socks Club warehouse has too many socks, since they always buy extra; they give extras to charity, over 50,000 pairs so far. — 00:13:44 · Awesome Socks Club
  • ★★ Hank asks viewers to buy discounted mystery socks, all profit to charity, with the code LOOKATTHISGRAPH (meant for another video) for an extra $5 off. — 00:13:44 · Awesome Socks Club, Good Store

In the description and comments

  • ★ The description jokes that Hank's thoughts turn out not to be simple, which is his whole brand. (playful) — video description
  • ★★ Replying to a viewer who says food, unlike content, is necessary, Hank comments that information is necessary too: it can come many ways, but you must consume it. — creator comment
  • ★ Replying to a viewer who notes nicotine is a stimulant with some utility, Hank concedes he should leave the cigarette talk to John. (playful) — creator comment

Threads in this video

Where the stories that moved here went next

Mentioned

Central: hyperpalatable food · information overload · social media · tobacco smoking

Also: Projects: Awesome Socks Club

Organizations: TikTok

Concepts: advertising · attention economy · conspiracy theory · elephant and rider · fact-checking · Food security · GLP-1 receptor agonist · malnutrition · media literacy · misinformation · moral outrage · recommender system · soft drink · ultra-processed food

Places: Florida · United States

Events: Reformation

Products: Coca-Cola · Doritos · Pop-Tarts

Only in the description or credits: Good Store

Also centred on tobacco smoking: BEEF DAYS · Am I Cigarettes?

Replies to

  • answers · Am I Cigarettes? — “a little video called Am I Cigarettes? Which you stole from me.”

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