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One of the more disturbing phenomena I've encountered recently is the "box-opening" ritual, to which I was tipped off by Paul Ockenden's Mobile & Wireless column last issue: people order a new laptop, phone or other gadget, video themselves lovingly unpacking the box and then post the video on YouTube for others to drool over. And manufacturers have sussed this happens and started sexing up the packaging.

I don't know why this unsettles me, because it only makes explicit what was obvious anyway: that we're degenerating into forms of fetishism that would make the cargo culters of Vanuatu giggle with embarrassment. Here's another example: the other night I flicked on to Top Gear and listened briefly as the presenters compared medium-priced family saloons to different breeds of dog. And then there's the camera porn on Flickr: pictures of people taking pictures of cameras, or panting over the crackle enamel on a vintage lens hood.

It's tempting to place oneself above all such nonsense. Tempting but impossible, because I feel the stirrings of my own addiction. For me it all starts with the scoring system on Flickr, which rewards pictures in different coinages such as views, favourites and comments. I find myself logging on to Flickr several times a day to look for the telltale orange "new comments" link that shows someone has looked at my pictures, and seeing it gives me a little rush of satisfaction not unlike that which a drag on a cigarette once provided. I start to analyse the total views of my pictures, seeing which ones people prefer and trying

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to guess why, then providing more of whatever it turns out to be. I decide that Flickr rewards sharpness, and while skill can maximise this for a particular camera, ultimately I'm going to need a better lens. Most modern digital cameras take good pictures with ease, but now I'm scouring the reviews pages and comparators to find out how to achieve a 1% increase in a quantity that brings me no financial reward, just a minor dopamine rush several times a day.

This is the motor that powers all advanced consumer economies. Make people dissatisfied with what they have, typically through advertising, and they'll buy more stuff. This expands the economy and puts more money in people's pockets to buy more stuff. All that's new is we're getting too sophisticated for advertising, and social networking sites enable us to advertise and review products among ourselves, which is bad news for consumer publishers such as, er...

The purpose of all this activity is less about utility than making us feel good. It might seem like a wild jump from this to the much-derided ethic known as political correctness, but fundamentally they're about the same thing: trying to raise a mental substance called "self-esteem", or to avoid lowering it through "abusive" language and practices. It's all about altering the balance of the brain amines that control our moods.

Everyone knows that fear triggers the release of noradrenaline, preparing the body for flight-or-fight by increasing the heart rate, voiding the bladder and bowels, and mobilising glucose stores. Biochemists and neuroscientists now understand a lot about the hormones and neurotransmitters that work in combination to generate those involuntary responses to events that we call emotions. Dopamine and serotonin mediate reward, satisfaction and joy; oxytocin and vasopressin govern bonding and affection; androgens and oestrogens mediate lust; and anxiety releases glucocorticoid stress hormones that can have long-term ill effects. Each substance affects different brain and body systems, and their effects overlap and interact in complex ways to play different chords on our emotional keyboards.