This is nothing.

See that? Already you probably think it’s something. It isn’t.

It’s nothing. This is a void that offers no utility, no purpose, no benefit. It doesn’t solve problems, improve lives, or fulfill desires. It exists solely as an absence. Got it? Complete nothingness.

But look at that…

We’re giving it attention, assigning meaning, somehow finding ourselves interested in its very nothingness. Humans are weird like that.

We have the ability to create value from absolutely nothing through games.

Let’s name our nothing. Let’s call it a “NONE.XYZ.”

Suddenly, this absence becomes a unit; something we can count, accumulate, and track. The simple act of quantification generates psychological value.

Great work making it this far! You’ve earned 47 NONE.XYZ!

Despite knowing these points represent absolutely nothing, you probably felt a small spike of satisfaction seeing that number. Go ahead, enjoy it a little!

Points, levels, and leaderboards function as powerful motivators, even when participants understand the fundamental meaninglessness of the system. We started with nothing, remember?

This transformation from nothingness to numerical significance taps into what behavioral economists call the scarcity principle: the scarcer something is, the more we value it. We’ve made literally nothing scarce, and somehow it works.

Here’s the kicker... let’s tokenize nothing. Now our brains treat it like any other resource. The tokens become achievements, the accumulation becomes progress, and the nothingness becomes, paradoxically, fun to collect.

How much NONE.XYZ you packin’?

But tokens of nothing alone aren’t enough. To create true behavioral change, we need scarcity plus time constraints; artificial limitations that transform casual interest into urgent desire.

FOMO, baby.

• What if we capped the total supply at 1 million points across all users?

• What if you could only earn nothing during certain hours?

• What if only the top 100 collectors got special “nothing.” Yes sir, nothing like it!

These methods create value without affecting the core reality of NONE.XYZ. We’re manufacturing artificial flaws and limitations that generate worth through pure scarcity and time pressure.

“Double Nothing Weekend!”

“Limited-time offer: Triple your nothing!”

“Act now: NONE.XYZ bonuses expire in 23 hours, 47 minutes!”

These tactics work because they exploit our cognitive biases about time and opportunity. While rewards don’t create long-term engagement, they generate powerful short-term behavioral spikes. Urgency itself becomes part of the value.

The popular method these days is the “streak.”

These are basically consecutive days of engaging with a system. Duolingo perfected this with their owl mascot that guilts users about breaking language-learning streaks. The streak is just a number that resets to zero if you skip a day, yet millions structure their routines around maintaining these arbitrary sequences. The streak becomes more valuable than the actual learning, and breaking it feels like losing something precious.

Scarcity also creates expertise. People become strategic when resources feel limited, calculating optimal earning strategies, planning around bonus periods, developing sophisticated mental models for maximizing their accumulation of nothing. My kids spend hours researching powerful Pokémon cards, arguing over the authenticity of rarity.

The mobile gaming industry has mastered these principles, generating billions from “free” games. Players spend real money on virtual currencies to buy imaginary items for temporary advantages in fictional scenarios. Energy systems limit free play time, creating artificial scarcity. Daily bonuses that reset if you don’t log in create urgency around engagement. Special events with exclusive rewards create FOMO for digital collectibles existing only in corporate databases.

This explains both our annoyance with and the success of NFTs (non-fungible tokens representing ownership of digital assets. ) Someone buys an NFT for $2.9 million, tries to sell it for $48 million, only to find the highest offer is $3,600. Yet the market persists! … because our instinct to value rarity runs deeper than rational economics. It’s hardwired into our brains.

This might simply be who we are.

OK. Let’s say the economy collapses.

For the sake of argument, let's just say that robots and AI eliminate most human labor. Money then, becomes meaningless. I expect we’ll continue creating value from nothing because this drive is fundamentally human. We’re wired to play games.

Humans won’t stop competing, creating, and striving. We invent sports with arbitrary rules and meaningless victories that generate intense emotional investment. We develop art forms serving no utilitarian purpose yet representing our highest achievements as a species.

We could arguably produce enough food, shelter, and material goods for everyone on Earth, yet we maintain scarcity-based distribution systems because they provide structure, meaning, and motivation for human activity.

Looking ahead, we already see new forms of value creation in purely digital spaces. As AI makes traditional content abundant, human authenticity becomes scarce and therefore valuable. While algorithms optimize efficiency, human decision-making becomes a luxury good. As machines handle routine tasks, human creativity and connection become the new currencies for competition and status.

Our capacity to create value from nothing isn’t a bug in human psychology. I think it’s our most important feature. It’s the same cognitive flexibility that enabled language, art, science, and civilization itself. We’ll always find ways to create games, invent competitions, and manufacture meaning from the void.

And... in case you forgot, it all started with nothing.

Thanks for reading! If you vibe to the ideas I express here, please consider subscribing and sharing with friends. We'll see you next time.

Nye Warburton is an educator and game designer who believes in the creativity of human spirit. This essay was created with improvisational sessions in Otter.ai and edited using Claude Sonnet 3.7. Images prompted in Flow State with Leonardo.ai.

For more information visit: https://nyewarburton.com