The Lost Art of Endings

Hello reader 👨‍🎨

Welcome to this Sunday’s essay. Let’s dive right in.

↓ Level 1: Digital products have eliminated natural endings
↓ Level 2: This loss of endings prevents us from creating true meaning and value in our experiences
↓ Level 3: We're evolving into a species that's losing its ability to process and appreciate finite experiences, fundamentally changing how we derive meaning.

Learning from an Immortal Demon

In one of the revealing episode of the series "The Good Place", four souls in the afterlife keep failing to teach an immortal demon named Michael about ethics and the human experience. Then our protagonist Eleanor, has an a-ha moment: Michael doesn't get it because he actually doesn’t know what it means for things to end. So they decide to let him taste mortality. Michael, played by Ted Danson —an immortal demon who look seventyish— suddenly becomes a normal mortal guy in his actual seventies. The moment it hits him that he's in life's later stages, he dives into a classic midlife crisis, forcing himself to taste every flavor life has to offer. It's through his approaching end that Michael finally grasps what it means to exist, the ethics, and to be human. That was the beauty of it all.

Life is our only finite resource and it's the defining piece of the puzzle of human experience. The show's creator Michael Schur, a philosophy nerd himself, tapped into something philosophers have been obsessing over forever: ethics and the death. Take Heidegger's concept of "being-toward-death" (Sein-zum-Tode). He argued that by staring down death as a constant possibility, we see our finite potential clearly and align our actions with our true selves. This "moment of vision" shows us life's full picture, pushing us to act with purpose instead of just floating along. Nietzsche, Sartre, and Camus all had similar thoughts—death's inevitability strips away our comfortable illusions, forcing us to engage honestly with life's temporary nature. For Camus, the confrontation with absurdity (including death) demands a rebellious commitment to meaning-making. So here's the question: can't we really taste life without an ending on the horizon?

Welcome to Digital Immortality

One of my all-time favorite games is Escape Velocity Nova, an old Macintosh gem. While this sequel to the '96 original EV had brilliant writing, gorgeous artwork, and endless replayability, what I really love about it was the experience of playing it in permadeath mode. Sure, other games had this mechanic; it even spawned the whole 'survival games' genre years later. Permadeath means exactly what it sounds like: when you die, you die. That's it. No quick saves, no extra lives, no second chances. Just start fresh. Why was this genuinely exciting? Because every decision carried weight. Before jumping into a new journey in space, I had to secure my escape pods, renew my insurance, double check my ammunition. It made me think twice before getting into trouble. Sound familiar? Yes, it's life in a nutshell. Without save states, our values shift and everything feels more real. We start cherishing moments and hunting for meaning. But in a world where everything's reversible and endless? Nothing feels real anymore.

Modern medicine and social psychologists have also studied the effects of endings on decisions. fMRI studies show our brains light up differently when we sense an ending coming. In a 2019 study, players in an 11-round game took way bigger risks in the final round compared to control group who didn't know when the game would end. This tendency stems from an increased focus on profit potential and occurs through anterior insula activity in the brain. It fits perfectly with Socio-emotional Selectivity Theory: when we see the end coming, we prioritize emotional satisfaction over long-term planning. Bottom line? The threat of real loss makes our choices matter and emotions authentic.

So where does that leave us in our world of infinite scrolling, endless content, and bottomless resources? And yes, I'm not just talking about social media, though they are the masters of the infinite scroll dark arts. Think about it: Word or Excel never run out of new sheets, you can send messages to a friend forever, and Spotify could literally soundtrack multiple lifetimes. We're living in the same kind of immortality that confused Michael—there's always more, always a chance to go back, always something new to experience. No endings in sight. We've become digital immortals.

We Actually Got Gamification Wrong

We're somewhat aware of this situation and looking for remedies. Social media tries to appease us with time limits, deadlines, and artificial scarcity solutions - playing nice, if you will. We could call this a half-hearted counter-movement: Apps with intentional limitations. I say half-hearted because they're designed to keep us from straying too far. It started with disappearing messages, then stories, and most recently BeReal's deadlines that supposedly promote unfiltered, natural flow. Despite all this, we couldn't move beyond the hidden gamification of engineered reward loops in endless content, which created what I call A.C. (artificial dopamine) - a problem in its own right. A.C. really shows itself in gamification mechanics: profile pages showing the incompleteness while promising a better life once done, daily streaks, and badges - the most preferred mechanisms of gamification. This easy access to dopamine became so popular that even video games, the original source of artificial dopamine, packed as much gamification into games as the games themselves. The mobile gaming industry took this further, evolving into hyper-casual and even idle categories where the genuine satisfaction of skill development increasingly takes a back seat.

But deep down, we feel something's missing. What's really missing is high-stakes. And what creates high-stakes? An inevitable end. Because high-stakes create high-value experiences. I'm talking about moving from the restless anxiety of infinite digital existence to the peaceful closure that comes from genuine fear of the end. I'm talking about a real "win-state" and permadeath. A genuinely human-centric experience would respect the finite nature of human life itself. We need to experience the satisfaction of choosing our own endings. This, of course, requires courage.

Invitation to Experiment

How can we transition to digital mortality? How can we embrace experiences ending naturally? How can we access the beauty of deciding where to stop, rather than being forced to continue endlessly? Perhaps like Michael, we first need to taste digital mortality experimentally. A social media tool with a specific profile deadline? A phone camera with finite amount of shots? I don’t know. But the real transformation lies in seeing these choices not as losses but as celebrations. This essay is about digital design & products, but we know we're living as if earth’s resources are infinite too, and the digital is pretty much physical as well. Maybe we need to design products that say "enough" rather than "infinite."

Tiny Challenge

As I have promised, I have a tiny challenge for you at the end of each issue. This issue’s challenge: Take only 12 photos this week and number them. Here is the rule, you can only click the shutter button 12 times. No picking the best shot.

Bright Minds

Seinfeld, one of the most successful sitcoms in TV history, ended after season 9 when ratings were through the roof, because Jerry Seinfeld felt the show had run its natural course and wanted to end it before experiencing its decline.

Time Capsule

Soap operas, named after their soap company sponsors because they started on radio as daytime entertainment for housewives in the 1930s, pioneered the art of endless content by deliberately crafting storylines that could extend indefinitely - characters would marry, divorce, die, come back from the dead, reveal secret twins, or discover long-lost relatives, all to keep the narrative perpetually moving forward without ever needing a true resolution.

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Peace,
Aydıncan.