Male grayling butterflies prefer to mate with darker female graylings. When caged with a female grayling and a cardboard cutout of a grayling painted black, the male will choose the cardboard cutout over the female.
Beyond being an example of bro falling for an unrealistic standard of beauty, such a preference reveals that even in matters fundamental to survival and reproduction, these creatures can be seduced by artificial models they’d never encounter in nature.
For the grayling, the artificial black butterfly is a superstimulus, or an exaggerated version of something it’s naturally attracted to but would never find in its environment.
We humans have our equivalents. Junk food with flavors no vegetable could match, apps that entertain us in perfect intervals, games that spoon-feed us little victories. Drugs, porn, gambling, doomscrolling, Doritos… They’re all black butterflies, engineered to exploit our pleasure circuits. And we, running our buggy Pleistocene-era software, are wired to really want them, even if they aren’t real or natural.
Technology has made these black butterflies not just accessible but abundant. And they grow more personal and prevalent by the day.
It’s okay to chase black butterflies sometimes. There’s value in suspending disbelief, in letting artificial things delight us. We all need occasional escape, quick hits of manufactured joy. Serotonin is serotonin.
Yet these black butterflies, for better or worse, reshape our expectations of ourselves and others. They can inspire or frustrate, fuel ambition or incinerate attention, build wealth or bankrupt us, strengthen or shatter our self-image.
And still we chase them, are attracted to them, regardless of their effect on us.
So routinely ask yourself:
- What are my black butterflies?
- Which keep fluttering back?
- What desires do they create, stoke, or fulfill?
Answer, then eliminate with care.
“Wisdom is always wanting the same thing, always rejecting the same thing.”
~Seneca, Letters From a Stoic (Book)