good morning amigos. professor gato here

today’s lesson: why is everyone so angry all the time right now?

the answer is that the rise of every new media form does this until society develops an immune system to it and social media is a particularly virulent informational form

objectively we live in a time of peace, safety, & plenty, yet the predominant emotions are anger & fear of everything from climate to inequality, the world going to hell to hobgoblins allegedly threatening our kids

it’s like living by a great river & fearing running out of water

the reason is the structure of media (this not new, it has happened before) let me start by saying, this is not, for the most part, some plot. no one is “doing this” to us in that sense. it’s an emergent property of a new and potent media type to which we have not yet adapted.

the holy trinity of clickbait is: fear, anger, and self-satisfaction.

if I can make you feel one of these three things, you’re going to click. if I can make you feel 2 or more, I can make you click and forward.

this is simply how we are wired as animals.

try paying attention to your own patterns. see if you see it. it's actually pretty obvious once you know what to look for.

how many times have you been outraged/scared by some headline? “can you believe X is doing Y!?!” this will make you click.

what will make you forward it is if the next thought is “what an idiot! how can anyone be this stupid/wrong/evil?” now you feel smug and righteous, and THAT makes you want to share.

this act of costless, instant sharing is what makes social media a new & virulent media type. it creates tsunamis of information/emotion. suddenly, we are all thomas paine w/ global reach. it reaches everywhere. your phone means you are never safe from this, never away from it

alone, this would be potent, but combined w/ the basic laws of economics that govern media it creates something altogether new b/c unlike any media type before, authors/publishers get instant, detailed, and accurate feedback on what garners attention. this is a key distinction.

we’re not talking about what people like or agree with, we’re talking about what they pay attention to & what they share. the publishers know instantly and adjust the content in real time. they get paid per view or click. that’s the ad model. they seek to maximize revenues

this means they ALL want your attention & there are a functionally infinite number of them. each not only wants but requires your attention or they will literally cease to exist. no viewers, no ad sales, no business. instant feedback and existential threat are a potent drivers

imagine a reality TV show to the death with 10,000 contestants. what would people be willing to do to get a rose? how outrageous would you need to be to get noticed and occupy the center of attention and focus?

it’s a prisoner’s dilemma. if you don’t do it, someone will. the only way to win a PD is trust, and there is zero trust here. if you will not race to the very least of least common denominators, there is surely someone who will.

bigly.

this all starts to sound like THEY are manipulating US. to some small degree, they are. but mostly, they can’t. the market won’t let them. the reality is that mostly they are just giving us what we’re clamoring for, to cite mencken, good and hard.

they have no choice

this generates real social effects/movements. whipping a crowd into anger/fear has been demagogue 101 since thag harangued his neighbors into hating the folks over the hill and taking a flint axe to them. but it’s the self-satisfaction part that makes social media so dangerous

it forms intense groups rapidly and eggs on their stridency. “i’m angry. angry, I’m furious! furious, I’m INCANDESCENT! OH YEAH? HOLD MY BEER AND WATCH THIS...!”

this feeds back into the same need to stand out above the noise to become signal

it propagates itself through biochemistry. being chosen as “popular” makes you want to do it again. dopamine hits are no joke.

nor do we feel the biofeedback of causing pain. it's easy to be mean on the internet. in real life, you see people cry. online, we're sociopaths.

worse, it means that the stupider something is, the more you want to spread it. pointing out how dumb that which made you angry is makes you feel smug & righteous. of course, someone else is feeling the same thing because they AGREE w/ what you hate. the collision is media gold

now consider the emergent property of this beyond endless flame wars/riled up twitter vigilantes as this set of incentives spill beyond social media and into “real life”. what sort of public figure thrives in meme soil possessed of this sort of fertility? loud, divisive, idiots

they can suck the air out of any room b/c they are making people angry/afraid/smug. only demagogues get on TV or the twitterstream. measured, considered views are too slow/dull. smart views do not generate emotional need to respond. they drown in noise. stupid is the signal

the masters of this medium are: trump. musk. AOC. anti-fa. outlandish students braying for intersectional accommodation. bernie & milo. we are bringing idiocracy upon ourselves b/c it’s emotionally provocative & we have the attention span of 3 year olds after 8 cookies

every new media type that emerged in the age of democracy led to what amounted to a “fascist” moment. radio brought mussoilini, franco, hitler, & FDR. TV brought kennedy, johnson, khrushchev, mccarthy. SM is doing it again. fascist & populist movements are cropping up all over

this is a good news/bad news situation. the bad news is this trend tends to run riot and the effects are NOT good. the good news is, more so than other times, we really are doing this to ourselves. we’re the ones giving this cavalcade of dolts and demagogues their soap boxes.

we need to develop an immune system. this is going to be the race. can we, as a society, develop social media antibodies before this virulent meme incubator can infect us with a full blown fascist and populist hysteria?

the social media virus mutates FAR faster than any other in history. if you get on top of one means of infection, 11 more crop up. it is always probing, always learning

we're junkies

we all want the dopamine hit of calling the righteous to the cause & having them click “like"

the only solution is mindfulness. many of you many not be old enough to remember your grandmother saying something like “they would not let them put it on TV if it wasn’t true.” it seems absurdly quaint. but we’re falling for the same thing now.

we are trusting a medium that has emergent tendencies pernicious to us.

so ask yourself, why am I so angry? why did I click on that? I HATE that guy.

why am I forwarding the words of the idiots and drowning out the words of the wise?

media this interactive will and must give us the what we ask for. we’re the problem. and we need to grow up.

it's possible that the reason we have never had aliens visit is that no species survives inventing social media.

let's buck the trend.

click safe.