[1]go to homepage [2] KOTTKE DOT ORG go to homepage [3]go to homepage go to homepage [4]go to homepage go to homepage [5]go to homepage [6] KOTTKE DOT ORG [7][ ] MENU [8] Member Login • [9]Home • [10]Membership • [11]Newsletter • [12]Goods • [13]Archive + Tags • [14]About/Contact dark mode light mode Advertise here with [16]Carbon Ads Socials & More • [17]Newsletter • [18]RSS Feed • [19]Bluesky • [20]Mastodon This site is made possible by [21]member support. 💞 Big thanks to [22]Arcustech for hosting the site and offering amazing tech support. When you buy through links on kottke.org, I may earn an affiliate commission. Thanks for supporting the site! kottke.org. home of fine hypertext products since 1998. Beloved by 86.47% of the web. [23]🍔 [24]💀 [25]📸 [26]😭 [27]🕳️ [28]🤠 [29]🎬 [30]🥔 × close posted Dec 29 @ 11:21 AM by [31]Jason Kottke  ·  gift link [32]Thin Desires Are Eating Your Life. “A thick desire is one that changes you in the process of pursuing it. A thin desire is one that doesn’t.” [33] [thumb-4807] [34] Thin Desires Are Eating Your Life · joanwestenberg.com The defining experience of our age seems to be hunger.  We're hungry for more, but we have more than we need.  We're hungry for less, while more accumulates and multiplies. We're hungry and we don't have words to articulate why. We're hungry, and we're lacking and we're wanting. We are [35][ ] Share [36]Open post [37]Copy link [38]Translate ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ [39]Bluesky [40]Mastodon [41]Reddit [42]Threads ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ [43]Email [44]Text/SMS [45]WhatsApp Comments 3 Sort by: thread — [46]thread . [47]latest . [48]faves Jason Kottke reposted 2025-12-29T17:12:34Z [49]@adora.io[50]Bluesky "The business model of most consumer technology is to identify some thick desire, find the part of it that produces a neurological reward, and then deliver that reward without the rest of the package." Gonna be thinking about this one for a while. [51]https://bsky.app/profile/kottke.org/post/3mb5atkftcw2w "The business model of most consumer technology is to identify some thick desire, find the part of it that produces a neurological reward, and then deliver that reward without the rest of the package." Gonna be thinking about this one for a while. https://bsky.app/profile/kottke.org/post/3mb5atkftcw2w [52]Reply [53]Share C Chris Bredesen 2025-12-29T20:31:22Z What a superb article. Thank you for sharing! What a superb article. Thank you for sharing! [54]Reply [55]Share K Kelsey P. 2026-01-05T04:16:04Z I think I’ll be using this languaging for a while, thanks for pointing us to it! It brings to mind that we’re most fulfilled when our desires meet our own idiosyncrasies, not the fulfillment of others’ narratives or expectations. I was reminded of this the hard way a couple months ago when we pivoted from our usual family vacation style of low-dopamine, forest bathing/beach combing to the wildly expensive (for us), social currency of Legoland. I’d say it was a thin desire on my part to avoid depriving my kids of what culturally is relevant; it takes commitment and the courage to live your values with thick desires! I think I’ll be using this languaging for a while, thanks for pointing us to it! It brings to mind that we’re most fulfilled when our desires meet our own idiosyncrasies, not the fulfillment of others’ narratives or expectations. I was reminded of this the hard way a couple months ago when we pivoted from our usual family vacation style of low-dopamine, forest bathing/beach combing to the wildly expensive (for us), social currency of Legoland. I’d say it was a thin desire on my part to avoid depriving my kids of what culturally is relevant; it takes commitment and the courage to live your values with thick desires! [56]Reply [57]Share × Hello! In order to comment or fave, you need to be a current kottke.org member. If you'd like to sign up for a membership to support the site and join the conversation, [58]you can explore your options here. Existing members can [59]sign in here. If you're a former member, you can [60] renew your membership. Note: If you are a member and tried to log in, it didn't work, and now you're stuck in a neverending login loop of death, try disabling any ad blockers or extensions. Or try [61]logging out and then [62]back in. Still having trouble? [63]Email me! × In order to comment or fave, you need to be a current kottke.org member. 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