Sometimes a thought comes into someone’s head, and Twitter is just there waiting to receive it. And so they put out a tweet:
Give it some time to stew, and…
Eventually that original tweet hit six MEEELLION views. Not bad for someone idly wondering about something.
As he said, many of the discussions were rational and calmly argued.
Then again, some people aren’t in for your low-key discussion. Saagar Enjeti is, according to his Twitter bio, “Co-Host of Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar and The Realignment Podcast”. Once you’ve clambered over the grammar, you can look up “Breaking Points”, which apparently is “A fearless anti-establishment Youtube show and podcast…We took a big risk going independent and we need your help to fulfill our mission of making everyone hate each other LESS and the corrupt ruling class MORE.”
Let’s see how that “hate each other LESS” bit is going, shall we? Because Enjeti had a view on why Americans don’t move to Europe:
Well, it’s a point of view. But note how it’s expressed: not as “I found Europe really expensive—7 euro for an espresso!”. Instead, he’s utterly condemning a continent’s coffee, taste and cost.
Note also the difference in visible statistics for the two tweets: the first has 172 retweets and 3,367 Likes (at the time of writing), and the second 171 RTs and 4,234 Likes. It’s a short, object lesson in what Twitter (and Facebook, and other social networks) demonstrate again and again: if you want to get attention, being outrageous is far more effective than being calm and reasonable. Enjeti might say that he wants everyone to hate each other LESS, but when you’re reliant on attention to your podcast and YouTube channel for money, a bit of divisiveness goes a long way. He might well have hit six meeellion views with his little bit of snark; I certainly saw a fair number of people adding their own toppings to it.
That’s because we are terribly tuned to respond to outrage. It’s how we demonstrate to our tribe—whatever tribe we choose to sort ourselves into—that we think the same as they do. Outrage is our way of pointing to unpalatable behaviour or attitudes, to say that those who do it should not be in the tribe. Richelsen’s tweet (asking about Europe) isn’t an outrage tweet: you can’t take a side. Enjeti’s tweet (about coffee quality/price) absolutely is.
Tribalism used to be a survival characteristic: humans (as in, homo sapiens) went through a pinch point about 200,000 years ago when numbers were under pressure from the Ice Age and competition from Neanderthals. Being in a tribe meant survival; humans aren’t much good at surviving alone, but have been coordinating for much longer (probably since about 400,000 years ago, when fire became an integral part of life). Being chucked out of a tribe—because you’d done something outrageous?—very likely meant death.
Nowadays, we don’t need a tribe to survive. Yet the patterns of behaviour live on. Outrage prompts emotion that’s hard to resist. Let’s look at another example.
Often, tweets will take on a viral life and resist all attempts to cut them back. Here’s another from this week:
This is a screenshot, for reasons that will be explained. Look at all those RTs and QTs and Likes* (*probably not actually “liking” the content, just bookmarking). I saw this bouncing around my timeline, with people being predictably furious, given that it popped up during Pride Month; though a hunt through replies to it found plenty happy to defend the homophobic side of the street. A classic Outrage Tweet™ .
Except it turns out…
(Marc) Owen Jones (not the other Owen Jones) is a terrific person to follow for debunking of viral junk and inspections of bot networks (Elon ought to hire him, really). As he pointed out, this was an account set up only recently. Soon after tweeting this, the account was locked, and then suspended. Precisely what it tweeted before that one is hard to gauge, but based on replies going back some days they seem to have been tweeting content setting homosexuality against Islam (or vice-versa) until they finally hit the virality jackpot. Because look, who’s going to check whether a “Qatar spokesperson” actually said something, when you’ve got a tweet just sitting there saying he (no idea who) did.
Note the wonderful lack of precision in the quote used in the tweet: no name, no date, no occasion, no location. Essentially, nothing you could use to do a quick search for veracity. Finding out whether this was ever said would be tricky, and anyway most people are just cruising for outrage, looking for something to engage with or comment on. And boy, they bit on that one.
But as is typical, the rebuttal garnered far less attention than the original. Fewer than 300 retweets for MOJ, against tens of thousands for the fake.
These two examples—pricey coffee and nonexistent quotes—sum up the outrage problem in a nutshell. If you say something divisive, people are going to get riled up, even if only in a world-weary manner. If you say something wildly untrue and divisive, your chances are even better because “fake news” (to coin a phrase) isn’t constricted by the requirement to be true. It only has to be outrageous and engaging, and it will get passed on. The tribal brain will kick in.
The social networks play a part in this, of course. All those Likes and retweets count, to the algorithms behind the scenes, as “engagement”. People are loving this content, the algorithms conclude, even if they’re actually busy hating it. And hate tends to be a much more powerful emotion—just think of anything you’ve seen in the past few days about any politician.
The other factor of course is the amplification: people can retweet stuff so that it gets into your timeline from others you never followed. You’ll be familiar with that sensation of feeling like an Outrage Tweet™ is following you around. It used to be possible to turn off retweets by muting the phrase "RT: " (without the quote marks). Back before the retweet was a function, that’s how people would retweet content, and Twitter stuck with it for a while. But that’s no longer an option—I just checked—which means we’re in the world where the Outrage Tweet™ will continue to dominate Twitter’s timeline.
The social warming impact of all this: the more time you spend on social media, the more outrage you will see and hear and read, because the internet is Very Big and will always provide more fodder for the outrage hopper. Imagine those people who furiously quote-tweeted that fake Qatar tweet: they’ll have gone on with their day and probably never noticed the rebuttal and subsequent vanishing of the tweet. The social temperature goes up that little bit. And then the next outrage comes along. Everyone gets a little more angry again. Rage and repeat.
I often wish it were possible to label Outrage Tweets as they pass by; it would be so interesting to tot up what proportion fit the category. (You could try Liking them, and seeing how many you’ve collected at the end of a day, or week.) Remember, the formula is that they’re expressing emotional absolutes, leaving no room for nuance or compromise. But being human, interacting with people in the modern world, should be all about nuance and compromise, about getting on when there are more of us than ever before. Sometimes I worry that social media is driving us in the exact opposite direction. Tribalism was once a survival trait. But maybe that time has passed.
The paperback of Social Warming comes out in July, but you can still get the hardback or ebook via One World Publications, or order it through your friendly local bookstore. Or listen to me read it on Audible.
The problem seems to be that social networks weren't created to better society, rather to make money and the way they do so is through 'enagement' which has translated into hate. I've intuitively known this about social media and it's why I've massively scaled back my 'engagement'. It makes sense what you say that being on Twitter and the like means: "everyone gets a little more angry. Rage and repeat." I often wonder at the beneficial transformation to society had social networks been designed around cooperation rather than raw profit?