This is not the right thing to take away from this. This isn't about one group of people wanting to be angry. It's about creating engagement (for corporations) and creating division in general (for entities intent on harming liberal societies).
In fact, your comment is part of the problem. You are one of the people who want to be outraged. In your case, outraged at people who think racism is a problem. So you attack one group of people, not realizing that you are making the issue worse by further escalating and blaming actual people, rather than realizing that the problem is systemic.
We have social networks like Facebook that require people to be angry, because anger generates engagement, and engagement generates views, and views generate ad impressions. We have outside actors who benefit from division, so they also fuel that fire by creating bot accounts that post inciting content. This has nothing to do with racism or people on one side. One second, these outside actors post a fake incident of a racist cop to fire up one side, and the next, they post a fake incident about schools with litter boxes for kids who identify as pets to fire up the other side.
Until you realize that this is the root of the problem, that the whole system is built to make people angry at each other, you are only contributing to the anger and division.
> Until you realize that this is the root of the problem, that the whole system is built to make people angry at each other, you are only contributing to the anger and division.
It's not built to make people angry per se - it's built to optimise for revenue generation - which so happens to be content that makes people angry.
People have discovered that creating and posting such content makes them money, and the revenue is split between themselves and the platforms.
In my view if the platforms can't tackle this problem then the platforms should be shutdown - promoting this sort of material should be illegal, and it's not an excuse to say our business model won't work if we are made responsible for the things we do.
ie while it turns out you can easily scale one side of publishing ( putting stuff out their and getting paid by ads ), you can't so easily scale the other side of publishing - which is being responsible for your actions - if you haven't solved both sides you don't have a viable business model in my view.
In social networks, revenue is enhanced by stickiness.
Anger increases stickiness. Once one discovers there are other people on the site, and they are guilty of being wrong on the internet, one is incentivized to correct them. It feels useful because it feels like you're generating content that will help other people.
I suspect the failure of the system that nobody necessarily predicted is that people seem to not only tolerate, but actually like being a little angry online all the time.
Sure -it's a mix - but to be honest I think it's over-emphasized - in that in the US most of that kind of money driving politics operates in plain sight.
For example, the 'Russian interference' in the 2016 US election, was I suspect mostly people trying to make money, and more importantly, was completely dwarfed by US direct political spending.
There is also a potentially equally, if not larger problem, in the politicisation of the 'anti-disinformation' campaigns.
To be honest I'm not sure if there is much of a difference between a grifter being directly paid to promote a certain point of view, and somebody being paid indirectly ( by ads ).
In both cases neither really believes in the political point they are making they are just following the money.
> In fact, your comment is part of the problem. You are one of the people who want to be outraged. In your case, outraged at people who think racism is a problem. So you attack one group of people, not realizing that you are making the issue worse by further escalating and blaming actual people, rather than realizing that the problem is systemic.
I don't see anything like outrage in GP, just a vaguely implied sense of superiority (political, not racial!).
I agree with grandparent and think you have cause and effect backwards: people really do want to be outraged so Facebook and the like provide rage bait. Sometimes through algos tuning themselves to that need, sometimes deliberately.
But Facebook cannot "require" people do be angry. Facebook can barely even "require" people to log in, only those locked into Messenger ecosystem.
I don't use Facebook but I do use TikTok, and Twitter, and YouTube. It's very easy to filter rage bait out of your timeline. I get very little of it, mark it "uninterested"/mute/"don't recommend channel" and the timeline dutifully obeys. My timelines are full of popsci, golden retrievers, sketches, recordings of local trams (nevermind), and when AI makes an appearance it's the narrative kind[1] which I admit I like or old jokes recycled with AI.
The root of the problem is in us. Not on Facebook. Even if it exploits it. Surfers don't cause waves.
No, they do not. Nobody[1] wants to be angry. Nobody wakes up in the morning and thinks to themselves, "today is going to be a good day because I'm going to be angry."
But given the correct input, everyone feels that they must be angry, that it is morally required to be angry. And this anger then requires them to seek out further information about the thing that made them angry. Not because they desire to be angry, but because they feel that there is something happening in the world that is wrong and that they must fight.
I disagree. Why are some of the most popular subreddits things like r/AmITheAsshole, r/JustNoMIL, r/RaisedByNarcissists, r/EntitledPeople, etc.: forums full of (likely fake) stories of people behaving egregiously, with thousands of outraged comments throwing fuel on a burning pile of outrage: "wow, your boyfriend/girlfriend/husband/wife/father/mother/FIL/MIL/neighbor/boss/etc. is such an asshole!" Why are advice/gossip columns that provide outlets for similar stories so popular? Why is reality TV full of the same concocted situations so popular? Why is people's first reaction to outrageous news stories to bring out the torches and pitchforks, rather than trying to first validate the story? Why can an outrageous lie travel halfway around the world while the truth is still getting its boots on?
As someone who used to read some of these subreddits before they became swamped in AI slop, I did not go there to be angry but to be amused and/or find like-minded people.
I suppose the subtlety is that people want to be angry if (and only if) reality demands it.
My uneducated feeling is that, in a small society, like a pre-civilisation tribal one where maybe human emotions evolved, this is useful because it helps enact change when and where it's needed.
But that doesn't mean that people want to be angry in general, in the sense that if there's nothing in reality to be angry about then that's even better. But if someone is presented with something to be angry about, then that ship has sailed so the typical reaction is to feel the need to engage.
>in a small society, like a pre-civilisation tribal one where maybe human emotions evolved, this is useful because it helps enact change when and where it's needed
Yes, I think this is exactly it. A reaction that may be reasonable in a personal, real-world context can become extremely problematic in a highly connected context.
It's both that, as an individual, you can be inundated with things that feel like you have a moral obligation to react. On the other side of the equation, if you say something stupid online, you can suddenly have thousands of people attacking you for it.
Every single action seems reasonable, or even necessary, to each individual person, but because everything is scaled up by all the connections, things immediately escalate.
The issue right now is that the only things you can do to protect yourself from certain kinds of predators is literally what will get you blown up on social media when taken out of context.
There's a difference between wanting to be angry and feeling that anger is the correct response to an outside stimulus.
I don't wake up thinking "today I want to be angry", but if I go outside and see somebody kicking a cat, I feel that anger is the correct response.
The problem is that social media is a cat-kicking machine that drags people into a vicious circle of anger-inducing stimuli. If people think that every day people are kicking cats on the Internet, they feel that they need to do something to stop the cat-kicking; given their agency, that "something" is usually angry responses and attacks, which feeds the machine.
Again, they do not do that because they want to be angry; most people would rather be happy than angry. They do it because they feel that cats are being kicked, and anger is the required moral response.
And if you seek out (and push ‘give me more’ buttons on) cat kicking videos?
At some point, I think it’s important to recognize the difference between revealed preferences and stated preferences. Social media seems adept at exposing revealed preferences.
If people seek out the thing that makes them angry, how can we not say that they want to be angry? Regardless of what words they use.
And for example, I never heard anyone who was a big Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, or Alex Jones fan who said they wanted to be angry or paranoid (to be fair, this was pre-Trump and awhile ago), yet every single one of them I saw got angry and paranoid after watching them, if you paid any attention at all.
>If people seek out the thing that makes them angry, how can we not say that they want to be angry?
Because their purpose in seeking it out is not to get angry, it's to stop something from happening that they perceive as harmful.
I doubt most people watch Alex Jones because they love being angry. They watch him because they believe a global cabal of evildoers is attacking them. Anger is the logical consequence, not the desired outcome. The desired outcome is that the perceived problem is solved, i.e. that people stop kicking cats.
The reason they feel that way (more) is because of those videos. Just like most people who watch Alex Jones probably didn’t start by believing all the crazy things.
We can chicken/egg about it all day, but at some point if people didn’t want it - they wouldn’t be doing it.
Depending on the definition of ‘want’ of course. But what else can we use?
I don’t think anyone would disagree that smokers want cigarettes, eh? Or gamblers want to gamble?
I think most people have experienced relatives of theirs falling down these rabbit holes. They didn't seek out a reason to be angry; they watched one or two episodes of these shows because they were on Fox, or because a friend sent it, or because they saw it recommended on Facebook. Then they became angry, which made them go back because now it became a moral imperative to learn more about how the government is making frogs gay.
None of these people said to themselves, "I want to be angry today, and I heard that Alex Jones makes people angry, therefore I will watch Alex Jones."
A lot of people really do, and it predates any sort of media too. When they don't have outrage media they form gossip networks so they can tell each other embellished stories about mundane matters to be outraged and scandalized about.
> When they don't have outrage media they form gossip networks so they can tell each other embellished stories about mundane matters to be outraged and scandalized about.
But again in this situation the goal is not to be angry.
This sort of behaviour emerges as a consequence of unhealthy group dynamics (and to a lesser extent, plain boredom). By gossiping, a person expresses understanding of, and reinforces, their in-group’s values. This maintains their position in the in-group. By embellishing, the person attempts to actually increase their status within the group by being the holder of some “secret truth” which they feel makes them important, and therefore more essential, and therefore more secure in their position. The goal is not anger. The goal is security.
The emotion of anger is a high-intensity fear. So what you are perceiving as “seeking out a reason to be angry” is more a hypervigilant scanning for threats. Those threats may be to the dominance of the person’s in-group among wider society (Prohibition is a well-studied historical example), or the threats may be to the individual’s standing within the in-group.
In the latter case, the threat is frequently some forbidden internal desire, and so the would-be transgressor externalises that desire onto some out-group and then attacks them as a proxy for their own self-denial. But most often it is simply the threat of being wrong, and the subsequent perceived loss of safety, that leads people to feel angry, and then to double down. And in the world we live in today, that doubling down is more often than not rewarded with upvotes and algorithmic amplification.
I disagree. In these gossip circles they brush off anything that doesn't make them upset, eager to get to the outrageously stuff. They really do seek to be upset. It's a pattern of behavior which old people in particular commonly fall into, even in absence of commercialized media dynamics.
> In these gossip circles they brush off anything that doesn't make them upset
Things that they have no fear about, and so do not register as warranting brain time.
> eager to get to the outrageously stuff.
The things which are creating a feeling of fear.
It’s not necessary for the source of a fear to exist in the present moment, nor for it to even be a thing that is real. For as long as humans have communicated, we have told tales about things that go bump in the dark. Tales of people who, through their apparent ignorance of the rules of the group, caused the wrath of some spirits who then punished the group.
It needn’t matter whether a person’s actions actually caused a problem, or whether it caused the spirits to be upset, or indeed whether the spirits actually ever existed at all. What matters is that there is a fear, and there is a story about that fear, and the story reinforces some shared group value.
> It's a pattern of behavior which old people in particular commonly fall into,
Here is the fundamental fear of many people: the fear of obsolescence, irrelevance, abandonment, and loss of control. We must adapt to change, but also often have either an inability or unwillingness to do so. And so the story becomes it is everyone else who is wrong. Sometimes there is wisdom in the story that should not be dismissed. But most often it is just an expression of fear (and, again, sometimes boredom).
What makes this hypothesis seem so unbelievable? Why does it need to be people seeking anger? What would need to be true for you to change your opinion? This discussion thread is old, so no need to spend your energy on answering if you don’t feel strongly about it. Just some parting questions to mull over in the bath, perhaps.
Thank you for raising this idea originally, and for engaging with me on it.
The opposite question - why so insistent that people wouldn’t seek it out, when behavior pretty strongly shows it?
Why are you so insistent that people don’t do what they clearly seem to do?
Why is that hypothesis so unbelievable?
Is it the apparent lack of (actual) agency for many people? Or the concerning worry that we all could be steering ourselves to our own dooms, while convincing ourself we aren’t?
> Why are you so insistent that people don’t do what they clearly seem to do?
I’m not rejecting the idea that people fixate on stimuli that produce anger. The question is why they do that, and the answer is unlikely to be “people just want to be angry”.
> Why is that hypothesis so unbelievable?
Because it runs counter to the best available literature I am aware of and is a conclusion based on a superficial observation which has no underlying theoretical basis, whereas the hypothesis I present is grounded in some amount of actual science and evidence. Even the superficial Wikipedia article on anger emphasises the role of threat response here. Mine isn’t, as far as I can tell, some fringe position; it is very much in line with the research. It is also in line with my personal experience. “People just want to be angry” is not.
It is important to understand that the things people try to avoid through gossip, exaggeration, and expressions of anger are not all mortal threats. They can also be very mundane things like not wanting to eat something that they just think tastes bad. So make sure not to take the word “threat” too narrowly when considering this hypothesis.
I don’t have any skin in the game here other than an interest in the truth of the matter and a willingness to engage since I find this sort of thing both interesting and sociologically very important. If you or anyone have some literature to shove in my face that offers some compelling data in support of the “people love feeling angry” hypothesis, then sure, I would accept that and integrate that into my understanding of human behaviour.
You may be vastly overestimating average media competence. This is one of those things where I'm glad my relatives are so timid about the digital world.
Many people seek being outraged. Many people seek to have awareness of truth. Many people seek getting help for problems. These are not mutually exclusive.
Just because someone fakes an incident of racism doesn't mean racism isn't still commonplace.
In various forms, with various levels of harm, and with various levels of evidence available.
(Example of low evidence: a paper trail isn't left when a black person doesn't get a job for "culture fit" gut feel reasons.)
Also, faked evidence can be done for a variety of reasons, including by someone who intends for the faking to be discovered, with the goal of discrediting the position that the fake initially seemed to support.
Is a video documenting racist behavior a racist or an anti-racist video? Is faking a video documenting racist behavior (that never happened) a racist or an anti-racist video? Is the act of faking a video documenting racist behavior (that never happened) or anti-racist behavior?
Video showing racist behavior is racist and anti-racist at the same time. A racist will be happy watching it, and anti-racist will forward it to forward their anti-racist message.
Faking a racist video that never happend is, first of all, faking. Second, it's the same: racist and anti-racist at the same time. Third, it's falsifying the prevalence of occurrence.
If you'll add to the video a disclaimer: "this video has been AI-generated, but it shows events that happen all across the US daily" then there's no problem. Nobody is being lied to about anything. The video shows the message, it's not faking anything. But when you impersonate a real occurence, but it's a fake video, then you're lying, and it's simple as that.
Can a lie be told in good faith? I'm afraid that not even philosophy can answer that question. But it's really telling that leftist are sure about the answer!
That's not necessarily just a leftist thing. Plenty of politicians are perfectly fine with saying things they know are lies for what they believe are good reasons. We see it daily with the current US administration.
Well yes, that's what he wrote, but that's like saying: stealing can be done for variety of reasons, including by someone who intends the theft to be discovered? Killing can be done for variety of reasons, including by someone who intends the killing to be discovered?
I read it as "producing racist videos can sometimes be used in good faith"?
They're saying one example of a reason someone could fake a video is so it would get found out and discredit the position it showed. I read it as them saying that producing the fake video of a cop being racist could have been done to discredit the idea of cops being racist.
There is significant differences between how the information world and the physical world operate.
Creating all kinds of meta-levels of falsity is a real thing, with multiple lines of objective (if nefarious) motivation, in the information arena.
But even physical crimes can have meta information purposes. Putin for instance is fond of instigating crimes in a way that his fingerprints will inevitably be found, because that is an effective form of intimidation and power projection.
I think they’re just saying we should interpret this video in a way that’s consistent with known historical facts. On one hand, it’s not depicting events that are strictly untrue, so we shouldn’t discredit it. On the other hand, since the video itself is literally fake, when we discredit it we shouldn’t accidentally also discredit the events it’s depicting.
So make fake videos of events that never actually happened, because real events surely did that weren’t recorded? Or weren’t viral enough? Or something?
How about this question: Can generating an anti-racist video be justified as a good thing?
I think many here would say "yes!" to this question, so can saying "no" be justified by an anti-racist?
Generally I prefer questions that do not lead to thoughts being terminated. Seek to keep a discussion not stop it.
On the subject of this thread, these questions are quite old and are related to propaganda: is it okay to use propaganda if we are the Good Guys, if, by doing so, it weakens our people to be more susceptible to propaganda from the Bad Guys. Every single one of our nations and governments think yes, it's good to use propaganda.
Because that's explicitly what happened during the rise of Nazi Germany; the USA had an official national programme of propaganda awareness and manipulation resistance which had to be shut down because the country needed to use propaganda on their own citizens and the enemy during WW2.
So back to the first question, its not the content (whether it's racist or not) it's the effect: would producing fake content reach a desired policy goal?
Philosophically it's truth vs lie, can we lie to do good? Theologically in the majority of religions, this has been answered: lying can never do good.
Game theory tells us that we should lie if someone else is lying, for some time. Then we should try trusting again. But we should generally tell the truth at the beginning; we sometimes lose to those who lie all the time, but we can gain more than the eternal liar if we encounter someone who behaves just like us. Assuming our strategy is in the majority, this works.
But this is game theory, a dead and amoral mechanism that is mostly used by the animal kingdom. I'm sure humanity is better than that?
Propaganda is war, and each time we use war measures, we're getting closer to it.
I like that saying. You can see it all the time on Reddit where, not even counting AI generated content, you see rage bait that is (re)posted literally years after the fact. It's like "yeah, OK this guy sucks, but why are you reposting this 5 years after it went viral?"
Rage sells. Not long after EBT changes, there were a rash of videos of people playing the person people against welfare imagine in their head. Women, usually black, speaking improperly about how the taxpayers need to take care of their kids.
Not sure how I feel about that, to be honest. On one hand I admire the hustle for clicks. On the other, too many people fell for it and probably never knew it was a grift, making all recipients look bad. I only happened upon them researching a bit after my own mom called me raging about it and sent me the link.
Not AI. Not bots. Not Indians or Pakistanis. Not Kremlin or Hasbara agents. All the above might comprise a small percentage of it, but the vast majority of the rage bait and rage bait support we’ve seen over the past year+ on the Internet (including here) is just westerners being (allowed and encouraged by each other to be) racist toward non-whites in various ways.
