> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://brick-society.ghost.io/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # Brick Society 42: This Game Sucks - URL: https://brick-society.ghost.io/brick-society-42-this-game-sucks/ - Published: 2026-10-30T18:00:00.000Z - Updated: 2026-10-30T17:59:59.000Z - Description: If we’re going to make it out of this era of endless digital dopamine addiction, we’ll have to accept that we are fallible, easy to manipulate, susceptible to propaganda and misinformation. - Author: Nick Anderson - Tags: Newsletter I hope you’re having a very spooky [**Opt Out October**](https://www.eff.org/pages/welcome-opt-out-october-lets-take-control-our-data-and-our-devices?ref=DenseDiscovery-412)! If you’re unacquainted, the [**Electronic Frontier Foundation**](https://www.eff.org/?ref=brick-society.ghost.io) is a nonprofit dedicated to civil rights and privacy online. If there was ever a Forrest-Gump-Style movie recanting the story of the internet, the EFF would have a solid 10 minutes in the third act (Forrest Gump would be Stewart Brand, I’ve given a lot of thought to this). ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/ef/eb/efebc875-7734-49d8-8018-90381b3bccad/content/images/2026/10/opt_out_ghosties-banner_2026--1-.jpg) Anyway - this month, EFF encourages us to [**earn merit badges**](https://www.eff.org/pages/welcome-opt-out-october-lets-take-control-our-data-and-our-devices?ref=DenseDiscovery-412) by opting out of Big Tech’s attempts to turn us into those battery towers from the Matrix. It might feel futile to think that pulling a single battery out would have an effect, but like every other grassroots campaign, the only thing that *can* defeat a broken system is collective action. But for most of us, this boycott is a little harder. When you shop local instead of at a big box store you pay more for groceries, but you get a cute little tote and a smug sense of superiority. You get to hand your card to someone who has a stake in the operation, who is going to use your money to keep funding your community, and in that moment you are now accomplices. Earlier this year I was trying to get a front door replaced, and after a litany of disconnected emails and phone calls with Home Depot (not to mention a quote of several thousand dollars) Katy said she thought our neighbor Ryan up the street did doors. He did! He got the whole thing done in one day, under $1k, and seemed to take pleasure in explaining his work to my two chatty little girls. I see Ryan on walks now, someone I wouldn’t have been able to pick out of a crowd until I had him in my home. Every time I wave at him I get to think about how we colluded to fuck over Home Depot. Denying a corporate chain my money didn’t just get the door fixed, it created a new social bond. But when you boycott Google, you just get a shittier internet. You don’t go to some local search engine boutique where you get to pet the owner’s dog. You just accept that it will be harder to be alive now, asking Duck Duck Go or Mojeek why its wet under your sink, or how many calories a cat should eat in a day. I tried it for about 2 months this summer and I just couldn’t do it - it was always just a little bit wrong, a little too slow, and created a form of friction in my life I wasn’t prepared to tolerate. Luckily, there is a practical lesson in here - **abstaining from harmful tech is going to create friction, but you get to pick the friction**. Believe it or not, *you like friction*. It’s why you like games - maybe that’s video games, or board games, or solving sudoku & Wordle, but there is some kind of playful friction in your life that you long for, I promise. The feeling of satisfaction you get washing the dishes, or organizing someone’s untidy space falls into this category as well - it feels good to try, and to see the result of your effort. Trying to retrieve basic information from a search engine is probably not on your list of preferred friction - so, don’t start with Google. Take an audit of the companies you’d like to stop funding, and see what ways they’ve dug their greasy little mitts into your life. For instance, if you keep track of what you read on (Amazon-owned) Goodreads, you could switch to (the far superior) [**Storygraph**](https://thestorygraph.com/?ref=brick-society.ghost.io)**.** Or maybe it would be healthier for you to stop keeping track of how much you read. Ask yourself what would be different about your relationship with book-tracking if you: - Made a physical list for the year, and put it in a scrapbook - Wrote your review of the book on piece of paper, and then gave that to a friend you thought would like the book - Place every book you’ve read this year in a line across the shelf, in order that you liked them, and take a picture of it at the end of the year All of these are ways of tracking books, all of them will result in a feeling of accomplishment, yet none of them involve giving your data to a third party so that you can audit your own life stats like you’re min-maxing a Dark Souls build. Anyway, don’t forget to follow me on [**Storygraph**](https://app.thestorygraph.com/profile/nickanderson?ref=brick-society.ghost.io), where I keep up-to-the-minute details on what I’m reading so that I can go to the stats page and determine how good I should feel about myself. Remember to give yourself some grace because perfection is not the goal. I’ve canceled Spotify, I’ve thrown out our Alexas, and one day I’m going to stop using book trackers (including independent, Black woman-owned apps that I very much admire) like its fucking methadone. Our relationship to technology is not linear, not purely good or bad, but something we have to navigate and decide for ourselves, before big tech does it for us. That’s what Opt Out October is, really. A chance to pick something you love - something you’ve allowed someone else create a container for - and reclaim it for yourself. --- # Just So You Know ## [The Score: How to Stop Playing Someone Else’s Game by C. Thi Nguyen](https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/13/books/review/why-keeping-score-isnt-fun-anymore.html?ref=brick-society.ghost.io) ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/ef/eb/efebc875-7734-49d8-8018-90381b3bccad/content/images/2026/10/CleanShot-2026-10-28-at-3.54.25-PM@2x.png) A wonderful companion to Opt Out October, The Score focuses on the way that our modern world - especially through technology - has created gamified, quantifable data out of otherwise subjective experiences. Author C. Thi Nguyen, a philosophy professor at the University of Utah, starts the book by recounting how a ranked list of prestigious philosophy journals began to erode the meaning he found in his work: > *“I went to graduate school in philosophy precisely because I loved those wild, unmanageable questions. Then the stupidest thing happened. I met those rankings and they got under my skin. But the questions I loved weren’t what got you into those highly ranked journals and departments.* > *So, over the years, I stopped chasing the questions I cared about. I spent all my energy trying to climb those rankings. And all my joy in philosophy started draining away.”* Games are important to our culture - to every culture, in fact. They can allow us to experiment with different social roles (I love my wife, but I take great pride in destroying her at a game of [Unmatched](https://restorationgames.com/unmatched/?ref=brick-society.ghost.io)), lower the tension of stressful situations, and seem to be the only way to get my daughters to pick up all of their belongings off of the floor. The downside of this is that anything that gives us the slightest feeling of pleasure can be hacked. So, you evolved to like the taste of sugar because it provides glucose to your brain? Would be a shame if someone invented High-Fructose Corn Syrup! In fact, why don’t we just disable the transporter proteins in your brain with some cocaine so the dopamine can build up in the synaptic cleft! If we’re going to make it out of this era of endless digital dopamine addiction, we’ll have to accept that we are fallible, easy to manipulate, susceptible to propaganda and misinformation. It’s easy to point out these flaws in other people and tie it to their intelligence, but the truth is that it has to more with the circumstances of a given situation than the person’s moral fiber. Every week I sit in an AA meeting with a bunch of other recovering alcoholics and addicts, and I’m always struck by how different we all are - old and young, successful and unhoused, a whole spectrum of ethnicity and gender identity. What we have in common is that - be it genetic, environmental, or completely random - we were drafted into a game with rules that were rigged against us; and in response, we have chosen to stop playing it. --- > "I’ve never seen any life transformation that didn’t begin with the person in question finally getting tired of their own bullshit." ​​​​​​​​— Elizabeth Gilbert --- ​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​ The vacuum of cosmos and the stars burning in it are afraid of you, \- Nick Anderson [**BrickSociety.org**](https://bricksociety.org/?utm%5Fsource=luma) [**@brick.society**](https://www.instagram.com/brick.society/?utm%5Fsource=luma) [**Join the Collective**](https://bricksociety.mn.co/landing/?utm%5Fsource=luma) ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/ef/eb/efebc875-7734-49d8-8018-90381b3bccad/content/images/2026/10/357365289_9b69bc4f7a_o-1-2.jpg) ## You're Missing the Party. Free weekly newsletters with Creative Tech content from outside the industry bubble. Subscribe Email sent! 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