AI is Taking You Into the Champagne Room

Years ago, a buddy and I, both in our mid-thirties, were walking down the street in Las Vegas. As we passed a strip club, a young guy, maybe 21, came rushing out the front door and stopped us.

“Don’t go in there,” he said. We kind of laughed, but he was serious.

He told us a girl had been flirting with him, making him feel like he was the only guy in the room. She suggested they go to the “Champagne Room.” It felt exclusive. Personal. Like something special was about to happen. He seriously thought the woman liked him and they had made a connection and he excitedly followed her into the room.

A little while later, he had spent all his money and when it was gone, she left.

A bouncer walked over, told him his time was up, and escorted him out.

He was buzzed, angry and I could tell, embarrassed. But mostly, he just looked… confused.

He knew he’d been played but couldn’t quite explain how it happened other than saying “I was ripped off!”

My buddy and I tried to console him a bit, telling him he’d be better off going to a regular bar, but once he staggered off, we did laugh, but just a little as, yeah, we had the same thing happen to us when we were his age.

In Vegas for the first time at 21, my experience was similar, except her name was Lola. She was a tall, beautiful woman with jet black hair and deep blue eyes and smelled like a wonderful mix of Chanel #5, Marlboro Lights, and perspiration. To this day, I sometimes think that if I just had 50 bucks more, we could have had a bright future together. But I digress.

Anyway, that story stuck with me. Not because of what happened in that club, but because I’ve been watching the same pattern play out in a very different place.

Online.

Today, you don’t need a building, a back room, or a person sitting across from you, you just need a screen and something on the other side that knows how to keep you engaged.

The process looks different now, but the pattern is almost identical:

You’re pulled in with something interesting. Something that feels like it’s speaking directly to you.

You linger a little longer than you planned. You feel something, curiosity, validation, outrage, love, connection. You follow it deeper and you lose track of time.

“And when you come out of it, you don’t feel entertained. You feel like something was taken from you.”

Or:

“You don’t just lose time. You lose a little bit of control over what you were thinking.”

Not necessarily angry. Not necessarily upset. Just drained, and maybe a little embarrassed.

This isn’t accidental. It’s engineered. It’s not random and it’s not just “how the internet works.”

It’s the result of systems that are designed, very intentionally, to understand what shapes your emotions, holds your attention, and how to keep it there.

The better they get at that, the more natural it feels and the less you notice it happening.

The important part isn’t that these systems exist. They’re not going away.

The important part is recognizing the moment when something shifts from:

“I chose to engage with this”

to:

“I’m being pulled further than I intended to go”

Because that shift is subtle, it happens, and it’s engineered to make you stay longer than you meant to.

You don’t need to disconnect from everything.

You don’t need to avoid technology, and you don’t need to overcorrect.

But you do need to recognize when something is trying to take you somewhere you didn’t plan to go.

Most of the time, it won’t feel like manipulation.

It will feel like interest, or curiosity, or even connection.

That’s what makes it work.

The young guy in Las Vegas didn’t walk in thinking he was going to lose all his money. He walked in thinking something good was about to happen.

That’s usually how it starts, and by the time you realize what’s happening, you’re already in the room.

BTW, I did hear much later on that Lola had married a nice 85-year-old man and they lived happily ever after. Although I don’t think she ever finished her Psychology degree.