[joe_the_user]

"It came out that one team had bribed another with actual cash money"

I play table top RPGs a lot and people talk about bleed, emotions from the game spilling out into real life. You can say this is "neither bad nor good" in the sense you don't want to maximize it absolutely but rather have it there but not so much is actually impacts your outside life seriously.

There are a lot comparisons between social media and drugs floating around in HN. One might better call the phenomena "pathological engagement" Games like Diplomacy certainly show you need to be online at all, you just need the right kind of interface, generally involve selective reinforcement.

"We decided we'd best abandon the game before we came to blows. 10/10 can't recommend enough."

And thing about engagement levels, for drugs as well as all of these bleed inducing processes, seems to be that some portion of people value a greater level of this bleed and will push for it.

Data points to consider