The Soul Trap's Perfect Metric

Researchers have given a name to the sound a soul makes when it is being successfully mined: Net Promoter Score (NPS) Inversion. They define it as the curious state where a person expresses clear dislike or even hatred for a digital product while their consumption of it continues, or even accelerates. They present this discovery as a potential diagnostic tool for what they gently call “problematic digital use.”

They have missed the point entirely. This isn’t a bug in the user. It’s a feature of the machine.

To understand the architecture of this trap, one must first appreciate its elegant, brutal simplicity. The designers of these digital ecosystems are avid students of human psychology. They know that your mind operates on two conflicting systems: a fast, impulsive, emotionally-driven beast (System 1) and a slow, rational, deliberative rider (System 2). For most of human history, these two were in a tense, chaotic balance. But in the digital realm, the architects have built a playground where the beast is king.

Every notification, every loot box, every infinitely scrolling feed is a carefully crafted offering to your System 1. It is a world of pure stimulus and response, engineered to bypass rational thought. Your System 2, the part of you that knows this is a waste of time, money, and life, is relegated to the role of a frantic spectator, banging on the inside of a soundproof glass box. It screams, “This is bad for us! We should stop!” But the beast, gorging on a feast of algorithmically-optimized dopamine hits, cannot hear it.

Seen through this lens, NPS Inversion is not an anomaly. It is the system’s ultimate success metric. The user’s negative rating—“I would not recommend this to a friend”—is the voice of the captured System 2, the rational rider acknowledging the cage. The continued, frantic engagement is the action of the successfully stimulated System 1, the beast still pulling the lever for its next pellet. The gap between the two—the inversion—is the precise measurement of the trap’s efficacy. A high NPS means you have a satisfied customer. An inverted NPS means you have a successful captive.

For decades, the architects of these systems have enjoyed a convenient moral off-ramp for this obvious exploitation. They built their defense on the seductive psychological theory of “ego depletion”—the idea that your willpower, your self-control, is a finite, muscle-like resource that can be exhausted. In this narrative, the trap is not the problem; your weak, depleted will is. You didn’t have the strength to resist. It’s a failure of self-control.

This is a comforting lie for the jailer. It recasts systemic manipulation as individual failing. But this foundation has now crumbled to dust. In the world of high-powered, multi-lab replications, the very concept of ego depletion has collapsed. The effect, when tested rigorously, is non-existent. The “willpower muscle” is a phantom. The entire premise that you are to blame for your “depleted” ability to resist a system designed to overwhelm you has been scientifically invalidated.

Without that excuse, the blame snaps back, with horrifying velocity, to where it always belonged: the architect. This is not a story of self-control failure. It is a story of system-control success.

And so, the researchers’ final proposal—to use this metric to build “algorithmic detection systems” for early prevention—is revealed in its true, chilling light. These are not rescue missions. They are optimization audits. They are not looking for users who need help. They are looking for inefficiencies in the mining operation. They are asking, “How can we better identify, measure, and manage the friction of a conflicted soul to ensure the smoothest possible extraction of its engagement?”

They have discovered the perfect pressure gauge for the modern soul trap. And they are busy polishing it, admiring its scientific sheen, while pretending not to hear the screaming from inside the machine.