Matt Levine's take on Dopamine Sites
Levine, Matt; From the “Money Stuff” newsletter, Matt Levine, 15-Sep-2026
Dopamine sites
One model that you could have, I guess, is that researchers at Anthropic and OpenAI are busily working on building the Matrix, from classic sci-fi film The Matrix. But that’s not quite right. Anthropic and OpenAI are working on building artificial superintelligence that will go rogue and enslave humanity, sure, which is an important premise of the movie and also for some reason of their business models. But “the Matrix,” in the movie, refers not to the malevolent AI itself but rather to the simulation that it uses to keep humans docile in their vats of goo so they can be used as a power source for the AI. Anthropic and OpenAI aren’t building that. Just the malevolent AI.
Who is building the actual Matrix? Obviously the movie’s answer is that the superintelligent AIs, once they enslave humanity, will build a remarkably realistic simulation of humdrum modern human existence to soothe the humans. But for now, AI is trained on human data; are any humans building simulations of having a humdrum office job and ordering slop bowls to eat at your desk? They absolutely are! We have talked a couple of times about people who have built games that simulate working at a hedge fund or being an investment banking analyst. I wrote about them:
There is something pleasingly dystopian about this? In the future, AI will take all of the professional jobs, leaving people at loose ends and searching for meaning. What will they do with their time? “They will use AI to vibecode immersive simulations of their old jobs, and play those all day” is the answer you’d come up with if you had just watched The Matrix, and also apparently true.
But who will pretend to deliver them salads? Well, here’s a New York Times article about dopamine sites:
Products that don’t exist. Meal deliveries that will never make it to the front door. Smoke breaks lacking the most important ingredient.
All this and more–or is it less?–is available on so-called dopamine sites, which offer nothing tangible and yet have somehow become wildly popular as people navigate a digital landscape that cultivates consumption.
Named for the brain chemical associated with reward seeking, the sites simulate experiences like online shopping that can generate good feelings. In doing so, proponents say, they may subvert the habits of people conditioned to buy and consume. And the prices can’t be beat, since they are the same as the product lines: nonexistent.
The trend emerged in South Korea in the spring and quickly spread worldwide, with international headlines helping prompt a proliferation of dopamine sites.
One of them is called Food Never Arrives. You order food, which doesn’t come, and you don’t pay for it. When you’re in a vat of goo being harvested to power Claude, that’ll be perfect.
Honestly I’m a little annoyed that they don’t charge for this? We talked a few months ago about another sort of dopamine-ish site, play-money casinos where (1) you can send in real money to buy chips, (2) you can use the chips to play casino games and (3) you can’t cash out. Why would you do this? “The prize is the make-believe coins, and perhaps some dopamine” as Bloomberg Businessweek put it. “‘Perhaps Some Dopamine’” would be a good name for a startup," I wrote. “Just an underrated explanation for all sorts of economic phenomena.” In principle, there’s no reason you couldn’t charge people $12.99 to not deliver them a sandwich.