Pavlov’s Dogs

The grimy smell of vapes clogged up what should have been breezy noon air as Miles coughed into his elbow. Gingerly plucking a handkerchief out from his blazer pocket, he used it to press the button to call the elevator.

He heard a chime as the doors slid open to reveal a bearded man saying, “Je suis un chien” to his phone screen; the phone chimed again and he looked satisfied as he walked out. A BonusLingo user, no doubt. The chime was a familiar sound all over the city, not just in the building that housed BonusLingo’s global headquarters. Miles sighed with relief as he saw that the lift was now empty. As he stepped in however, he grimaced; the odor of a recent food delivery polluted the claustraphobically small space. He adjusted his face mask. 

The elevator hummed quietly as it accelerated up through the building. Fighting off intermittent motion sickness, Miles gripped the railing and focused on the changing numbers on the screen. And then - freedom. The doors opened and cool, filtered air rushed in, providing welcome relief after his arduous journey from the ground floor. He found himself in a well-lit reception area, and noted approvingly that the white walls adorned with TV screens and framed news articles detailing the rise of BonusLingo also displayed a sign proclaiming that the area was disinfected every two hours. 

Glass doors to the left of the reception desk opened, and a man in his twenties wearing a cap and casual clothing appeared. He stretched out his hand as he approached; Miles, who would normally adjust his glasses to keep his hands busy and avoid a handshake, took a deep breath, steeled himself, and returned the gesture.

“Mr. Crane, from The New Thinker magazine? I’m Matt, Pavlov’s assistant. Follow me right this way.” 

“How was your journey here?” Matt asked. Miles replayed the agony of the taxi ride that morning and the dramatic twists and turns it had taken in his head, before answering, “It was fine, thanks.”

They arrived at a studio room. “Pavlov records and films his weekly podcasts in here,” Matt said, beaming. “Just two weeks ago, we had Powell Janulus in here, the Guinness World Record holder for most languages spoken!” He put his hands together and did a little bow before exiting. 

Pavlov immediately stood up and walked over toward Miles with a huge smile. Wearing a brazenly bright blue blazer with a light grey turtleneck underneath, the journalist couldn’t help but notice how perfectly white his teeth were. The luxurious fabrics and absence of labels suggested that Pavlov was the epitome of “quiet luxury”. 

“Ah! Mr. Crane, a pleasure to meet you!” Pavlov clasped Miles’s hand in both of his, creating an uncomfortably firm grip.

”Mr. Dmitriev, thank you for taking the time to speak with me,” Miles said with a tight smile as he attempted to extract his hand.

”No no, please, call me Pavlov!” He said, enthusiastically holding the handshake for just that little bit too long. “Here, take a seat and make yourself comfortable. I loved your piece in The New Thinker about dialects and their importance to culture. So what made you interested in our little company?” Pavlov asked as a squirrely woman wearing headphones around her neck scurried over to attach a microphone to Miles’s tie. 

The “little company” he was referring to was the fastest growing language learning app in the world, with 250 million unique daily users worldwide. 

“It’s at the intersection of language learning and tech, both of which I find interesting,” Miles made an effort to make eye contact, which wasn’t easy under the bright production lights.

“Are you ready to begin, Mr. Crane?” A voice from the back called out.

“Just a moment…” He reached into his middle left pocket of his tweed blazer and retrieved his own recorder, placing it on the table. “Do you mind?” After a panoply of nods from Pavlov and the production crew, he clicked the red button. “Ready.”

——

“Have you got everything you need for the article?” Pavlov asked as a crewmember removed Miles’s mic.

Miles straightened his tie and picked up his recorder. “I think so.”

“Well I’ll make sure Matt, my assistant, gives you his email address so you can get in touch if you have any other questions,” Pavlov gestured for Matt to come over.

“As we were discussing earlier, what’s astonishing is the consistency of growth of your paying subscription base. I’ve never seen anything like it,” Miles said as he slowly gathered his things. “Your investors must be very happy with that.”

“Consistency is the cornerstone of language learning, and I believe that’s one of the secrets of our success,” Pavlov beamed and clasped his giant, tanned hands together.

“But given how good the Freemium tier of your app seems to be, it feels particularly impressive that your users almost universally upgrade from the Freemium tier to bronze after the first month. All the other tech CEOs must be dying to know your secret.”

“Oh they do,” Matt interjected. “And yes, we’ve had excellent results with our users. They all want the premium version after the first month, and by month three, everyone has upgraded to gold tier.”

“Exactly one month?” Miles asked.

Matt’s eyes lit up. “Yup, exactly–”

“Not exactly,” Pavlov cut in with a broad smile, but his cheeks twitched slightly as he shot a quick look at Matt. “But most users see how well the free version works and want to level up their learning. Matt, could you pass me a glass of water, please?”

Miles stood up. “Well, thank you again for your time. I’m looking forward to writing this up.”

“It was an honour to spend time with someone as well-informed about language learning as yourself,” Pavlov replied. As he went to stand up, Matt reappeared with a glass of water, and the two knocked into each other; water spilled everywhere like a flowing tide that rushed onto the beach that was Pavlov’s grey turtleneck.

“Oh! Sorry, Pavlov. I’ll get a towel and spare change of clothes.” Matt scuttled off.

“Brilliant. Partly due to my assistant’s clumsiness, to prepare for these scenarios, we always keep a spare change of clothes around here so that we’re prepared for even the most disastrous of events, including getting my Hermès belt wet, which, thankfully, didn’t happen. I find that these plans are also important in business, as preparing for the biggest fallouts results in a perception of reliability of us by our clients in B2C sales.” Pavlov paused. “Wait, somebody that heard that needs to put that into AI for a LinkedIn post. Quick, get me in a photo with the wet shirt.”

After flashing a quick smile at the camera and then one with a distressed look at his drenched top, he turned to address Miles. “Once again, it’s been a pleasure to meet you, Mr. Crane. Matt will help see you out.”

Miles waited until he was in the elevator before he pressed the red button on his tape recorder to stop the recording.

—-

Pavlov Dmitriev

Posted 2 hours ago

My assistant spilled coffee on my shirt 10 minutes before a meeting. ☕

I had a spare shirt. 👔

Crisis averted, no stress.

This reminded me of a lesson I learned in B2C sales early on in our BonusLingo journey. 

The best sales strategy is reliability.

For a user of BonusLingo, a “spilled coffee” moment is a lost progress streak☹️, or a feature that doesn’t work offline. 📴

When we build a product that seamlessly handles these frustrations–with auto-save💾, offline mode, and easy sync– we do more than fix a bug. We prove we understand our users’ lives. We earn their trust not with a slick ad, but with a flawless experience.

That trust is what turns a first-time download into a lifelong customer–and learner. 

#B2C #StrengthinReliability #LanguageApp #BonusLingo #SaaS #Goals

—

Miles rolled his eyes as he read through the LinkedIn post, just one in a sea of other AI-written slop on his feed, all drawing inspiration for B2B and B2C sales from unrelated life events. He sighed as he switched tabs to read the statistics disclosed by the company. Every other site had said the same thing; the first tier of the subscription at one month, then at two months and finally three months in. It would have to be quite the coincidence if just over 93% of BonusLingo users followed the same schedule for upgrading subscriptions.

He propped his tablet up on his desk, right in between his computer and a photo of his Dobermann, Indy, looking deeply into the camera. He called his friend Ankha to see if she could provide any insights into the programming. A trusted expert that served as a useful source for articles Miles had written in the past, he was sure that she would help him figure BonusLingo out.

When she entered the meeting, the camera started with a loud thump as it seemed to be that the ipad on the receiving end of the call had clattered to the ground. “Sorry! Just hold on…” The camera turned off before it came back on. “Just gotta finish this section…” A chime sounded. “There. Hi MC! Sorry about that! Needed to get my BonusLingo streak in.”

“It’s funny you say that because I’m actually calling you about BonusLingo.” Miles said.

“Ah, yes, you said you were going to interview Pavlov whats-his-name, right? How was it?” Ankha leaned in closer to the camera, eyes wide. “And how shiny were his teeth?”

Miles laughed. “Well, his teeth were very shiny—”

“Sorry, it’s just that I saw his TED talk and they were so white! Continue.”

“Okay. He’s extremely charming and gave a great interview, but something felt off.” Miles detailed the brief conversation about subscription upgrades. “I’ve been looking through BonusLingo’s public documents and statements, and I found this.” Miles sent a link to Ankha’s device. “It seems that users consistently upgrade their subscriptions when they reach certain milestones - and it’s the same for all regular users. At exactly a one month streak, people upgrade from freemium to bronze tier. After another month, silver, and after another, gold. It’s weirdly monolithic in nature.”

Ankha looked deep in thought. “I upgraded to silver tier just yesterday, actually.”

“What’s your streak now?” Miles tilted his head.

“Lemme check…two months and one day.” She paused. “Hm…okay. That is very weird.”

“Do you think you could look into the code for me? I’ll make sure the magazine pays you, of course.”

Ankha waved a hand. “Yes, yes of course I’ll do it. I don’t like being part of a monolith, so I’d do it for free - though, to be clear, I absolutely will take payment for this.” 

“You’re the best,” Miles said, and went to sign off.

“Wait!” Ankha cried. “Do you think he has veneers?”

—

Miles strolled along the brown gravel path, spotting the square stone table. The rest of the group were already there, setting up the game.

“Ready for some mahjong, Miles?”

“Sorry I’m late! I was just researching a story and got caught up with time and then—”

“Don’t worry about it.” Harper smiled as she rolled the dice. For the past few years she’d been writing a novel and had a very prominent curiosity about her. “What’s the story?”

“I found a CEO whose company has weirdly consistent subscription upgrades. I’ve got someone looking into the tech to see if it’s something to do with the code and she sent me a message yesterday saying I need to read up on pavlovian responses.” Miles flipped his tiles up and started to rearrange them.

Ivan lit up, showing off his experience in psychology.  “Pavlovian conditioning is when continuous repetition of, say, event A happening after event B, you automatically psychologically associate event A with happening directly after event B whenever event B happens. Pavlov, the scientist it’s named after, trained a dog by ringing a bell whenever he served his dog food. After a while the dog started salivating whenever the bell rang because they started to think of food whenever the bell rang.”

“I actually have a favourite tweet about this.” Harper read from her phone, “‘the true genius of classical pavlovian conditioning is that every time i hear “pavlov " i automatically think of a dog’.” Everyone at the table cracked up in laughter. “Are you allowed to tell us the name of said company?”

Miles had been playing mahjong with this group every two weeks for the past eight years. It was a circle of trust. “Well, I guess so. Just know that this is privileged information, so don’t say anything to anyone else, okay? You’ve heard of BonusLingo, right?”

“Of course!” Ivan interjected. “I’ve been learning Russian for a few weeks now.”

“Well, I suggest that you don’t upgrade your plan.”

“Why?”

“Not entirely sure. I’ve got a feeling that they’re up to something, though.” He paused, deep in thought.

“Are you going to pick up a tile?” Harper smiled warmly at him. “Quick game’s a good game, Crane.”

Miles shook the thought away, and picked up a tile. “Sorry about that…and this.” He laid his tiles face-up. “Good game. Are you up for another?” The others all looked over his winning hand and calculated the points before setting the game back up again.

—

Miles had just finished feeding his Dobermann, Indy, when the phone rang. He picked up and looked at her screen.

“Are you ready for this?” Ankha got straight down to business.

“What have you found?”

“You were right, something’s up. It was interesting. Very interesting.” She crossed her arms and bit her bottom lip. “There is code that is in cahoots with the chime. Embedded in the programming is a flash that is triggered by the chime that sounds whenever you get the question right. I used a program I coded to slow it down for you so that you can watch the video much more slowly than it normally would be by ordinary users. For context, this video is being shown to users in a matter of milliseconds.

“Let me check it out.” Miles hit play and the BonusLingo chime sounded, but very slowly. Simultaneously, a quick pattern of changing lights danced across the screen in perfect square shapes. It was followed by an ad suggesting an upgrade to the next tier of the subscription. “Okay. So what are the lights for?”

“Well, a friend of mine has experience in this field, and they told me that the light pattern combined with a sound and that experience where you feel overjoyed about getting your streak in will create a pavlovian response if continued over a long enough period of time. That means that whatever is shown to you afterwards will make you feel happy and optimistic. I think that that optimism generated by the response is what makes people choose the next subscription tier.

“Due to the speed at which it pops up and closes, the pattern is imperceptible to the natural eye. However, the unconscious mind is always active and reacts to these patterns with subconscious responses. And that is how they’re doing it.”

“I see…so it is coercion…of a sort.” Miles paused, but a small smile briefly crossed over his face. 

“It’s totally coercion! Listen, I’ll send you some screencaps and data so you’ve got something solid to show your editor as evidence. But Pavlov is definitely conning people into upgrading and paying.”

“Thank you so much for this. I know how busy you are.”

“They conned me. Of course I’m available.” Ankha grumbled. “I’m going to cancel my subscription…but I won’t delete the app, no, I still need to learn French to apply for citizenship in the future.”

“But…didn’t they scam you?”

“It’s just that, besides them scamming and coercing me, it is such a good language learning app. Not that I’m defending them, or anything.” She added hurriedly.

“You’re so hopeless.” He laughed. “Bye!”

“Au revoir!” 

Miles sank back into his chair as the crepuscular light seeped in through the shutters before straightening himself, the armchair’s cushion squeaking as he did so. Indy came to rest at his feet and he began to write the exposé.

—

Miles was back in that juggernaut of an elevator, mopping his brow. Apparently it wasn’t just food deliveries that generated odors around there; someone very sweaty had obviously been in the lift before him. 

Two hours earlier, he had received a text message from Matt, Pavlov’s assistant:

‘Pavlov wants to have a chat with you about the interview.’

‘Are you free to stop by our offices at 3pm?’

Matt was waiting for him when the elevator doors opened, and escorted him to a different room from last time. Pavlov sat behind an enormous, but sparse metal desk, with a TV that almost stretched to all four corners of the wall behind him. 

Pavlov, wearing a denim shirt and trousers, nodded at Matt, and the assistant left.

“Here, Mr. Crane, sit.” The CEO smiled calmly as he gestured to the seat in front of his desk. Miles noted the sudden formality, but didn’t change his demeanor in any way. 

There was a long silence. Miles was unfazed by that; he was more than familiar with silence as a tool. 

Pavlov broke first. “I hear you’ve been very productive with your time lately, Mr. Crane.” His words were cold as ice. 

“I try.” Miles shifted in the uncomfortable metal chair.

Pavlov gazed out the window. “It’s so easy to tear things down. Those who don’t build don’t understand how much it takes to create something.” He turned back to Miles. “Mr. Crane, are you learning any languages at the moment?”

“I’ve been learning Portuguese for a little while now.” After a brief silence as a small glint shone in Pavlov’s eyes, Miles hurriedly added, “The message said that you wanted to talk about the interview. What about it?”

“Well, I wanted to see how far into your article you are. Perhaps I could offer some suggestions that would be helpful for you.” Pavlov smiled calmly. A loud familiar chime resounded in the room as the TV turned on and flashed with a brief, dazzling pattern of lights.

Miles went quiet.

“Mr. Crane, it has come to my attention that your article concerning our company assumes that we are involved in some scheme. It’s time that you stop writing the article. You also want to delete all information concerning said ‘scheme’ that you have on your devices. It is in your best interests. Is that understood?”

“Yes, Mr. Dmitriev. I will stop writing the article.”

“Perfect. Thank you for your time. Matt will escort you back to the elevator.”

Miles dutifully stood up and followed the assistant.

The moment that he left the vicinity of the building, Miles got his phone out and called a taxi, hands shaking.

—

Safely back in his study at home, Miles got a ping from HelioLingua, stating that he needed to get his daily European Portuguese practice in.

After some quick language learning practice, he started jotting down some notes that outlined the interaction and Pavlov’s perceived purposes. Pavlov’s brainwashing attempt on Miles was flawed in only one way; he assumed that Miles used BonusLingo to learn Portuguese, but BonusLingo only had Brazilian while Miles just wanted to learn European Portuguese.

The funny thing, he thought to himself, was that it meant that, if his acting skills were good enough, Pavlov would be off his case since he thought that he had been successful in his attempts. Ankha would be feeling very smug that Miles had known to pretend to be brainwashed because of her investigation.

Miles added in the details of his latest meeting with Pavlov and sent off the final draft to his editor. He smiled to himself. Being able to write about how the CEO of BonusLingo attempted to literally brainwash him was a great ending to the story.

—

By the evening of the next day, the topic of BonusLingo-gate was all over the news and the web as Pavlov attained what Miles considered to be the worst kind of fame; infamy. After all the media attention, some people on Reddit did some digging and found that Pavlov Dmitriev wasn’t even his real name. It was just a name designed so that his company would look more appealing to venture capitalists, and Steve Fern didn’t attract much attention. He wasn’t even from Russia; he was from Eureka Springs, Arkansas.

After a few weeks, BonusLingo was forced to give up the Pavlovian technology. While the revenue and the rate of subscription substantially dropped, the company remained a well-known  and often-used language learning company; except almost everyone was using the free version. It seems that a lot of people agreed with Ankha that it was too good a software to give up.

In the Mouse Skies Café, Miles was casually looking around when he spotted a familiar face. As Pavlov/Steve strolled into the café, Miles gawked in surprise.

Spotting him, Pavlov stopped and peered at him. “Is that Miles Crane?”

“Hello, Mr. Fern. Nice to see you.” 

Pavlov moved towards Miles’s table and sat down. “Mr. Crane. I want you to know that there are no hard feelings here.” He smiled calmly at Miles and then leaned in. “In fact, you did me a favour. The technology has so many uses that go beyond subscription upgrades, and let’s just say that some people are dying to have it.” The man’s teeth had remained perfectly white, his cashmere blazer still clean and shiny - everything in perfect condition, including, it seemed, his career.

Miles smiled tightly, but said nothing.

After a moment, Pavlov broke the silence. “Great seeing you again, Miles. Thanks for your help. It was unconventional, but very effective. I plan to do a LinkedIn post about it sometime soon. I wish you well.”

And then he left.

As he stirred his hot chocolate, Miles began to ruminate on his next article about people who fail upwards. 

But then Miles got a ping on his phone; it was time to learn some European Portuguese.