Right now, millions of people are switching their connections from the internet home of one flamboyant, unsupervised billionaire to other arrogant, unsupervised by many billionaires, there seems to be hope that this change will, for a while, throw away the trolls and the Nazis, allowing another symbol of the not-so-remembered years to be restored. Good luck with that.
We live in a capitalist society that has spent hundreds of years creating tools to help create wealth. The end of that evolution is corporations: money-making engines that remain, until now, the best way to turn the work of thousands – and the needs of millions – into a fat pile of money for the very few.
Social media does the same thing with interest that a company does with money. Since the long-defunct site Six Degrees first appeared in 1997, social media has evolved at a speed that online-only services were able to achieve. Each of these generations has had a better machine to capture the attention created by millions of users and turn the popularity of a few “thought leaders” or “influencers” or other articles that have passed as quickly as the pages that produced them. they.
And the result is an aggressive economy.
Just as late capitalism rests on the removal of all the benefits that workers have gained over centuries of negotiating the relationship between work and reward, the economy of anger has risen to prove that, regardless of intent, anything that happens on social media is a disaster.
Over the past few decades, supermarkets have eaten up the profits that once went to small businesses, while returning lower wages and fewer jobs. Then online retailers ate up many of the big stores, returning less service and worse payouts.
The social network has done the same with both “news”, according to the stories that have already been shared on the fences or among those waiting for a haircut, and News according to what has already been published in the so-called “newspapers” or broadcast in a half-hour format between 6 and 10 PM.
Inside the news there was always a strong attraction to what was once called “yellow journalism,” also known as gossip, tabloid news, and more recently as clickbait. The platitudes about rational rationalists have become tiresome. WTF is good? Content is always useful, whether it’s in print, online, or online.
The way social media has changed, it’s starting to follow an approach that rewards those who can attract attention, with rewards that can range from emotional satisfaction in the background to a profitable partnership to continue spreading the f-ckery in the big time. Fox news.
And for those who think that Threads, the latest social network, will provide a break from the pressure, The Washington Post they have your stories.
Meta is done with control … When creating Threads, Meta will give users the opportunity to control what they see – including controversial and highly controversial articles – instead of making decisions that the company itself, Meta President of Global Affairs Nick Clegg. he told The Washington Post. It’s an approach that Meta has already adopted on Facebook, where the company has given users more ways to customize what appears in their feed.
The meta doesn’t reduce the prevalence of aggressive economics: it increases it. Which means things will get worse.
“A pitiful pile of trash and garbage” may not seem like a certainty in a system built around countless eyewitness searches, but it is. It is as definite and mathematically clear as the relationship between entropy and the Second Law of Thermodynamics.
In this aggressive economy, there are several ways to successfully hunt for more gigaseconds. You can be too funny. Very tasty. Very talented. Although very wise. All of these things will attract less internet attention in the short term. But in an uncontrolled system, none of them can compete very badly (link omitted intentionally).
The reason is simple: Anyone can do it. Elaborating on a historical or scientific fact requires knowledge. Creating a humorous moment requires empathy and poise. Taking a musical instrument and placing it in a person’s heart takes years and continuous dedication. But cursing people based on their race, gender, sex, religion, skill, or any of the deeper qualities is just putting aside good morals for 280 people.
Anyone can be a troll. It doesn’t take years of training or research: It just takes a willingness to be happy and not hurt. The more pain, the better.
Here’s how it works, in one simple tutorial:
Say something bad. Say something meaningful. Immerse yourself in id monsters and let them rage. If your thoughts involve a few misspelled words, old mistakes, or scientific facts that have been turned on their heads, that only makes it better. Because even people who were willing to ignore racism, misogyny, and racism of all kinds will step in to correct the use of the term Bunker Hill. Every time you get a response that starts with, “Okay…” – give yourself a bonus.
Some forms of aggression may require work, but being overly stupid or even more aggressive—and these are often the same—can be as simple as being childish in the street.
Just look at it first person list who Twitter is paying under its new “producer” payment program.
“Oh. Elon Musk wasn’t kidding. Making money is real,” wrote an anonymous account called End Wokeness, which has 1.4 million followers, with a photo showing more than $10,400. …
“This is a nice change from being banned by Twitter 1.0 for almost 2 years to now getting paid to post Thank you @elonmusk,” said right-wing influencer Rogan O’Handley, known as DC Draino.
This is a system where cruelty, intolerance, and contempt for the truth are not tolerated; it’s beneficial – both for Twitter and for the worst users.
There are many ways to use this process. Terrifying discrimination. Too bad. Very passionate. An aggressive economy has all the ways people can get hurt, and it provides an incentive to get more.
Like a fatal traffic accident, anger often fails to impress. In the aggressive economy, that interest can be translated into a kind of fame, and even wealth. And if an angry response elicits angry responses, it only increases the payoff.
That’s right. That is why things are getting worse. Because extreme diligence requires work, while extreme evil is easy. The ease with which the economy of outrage rewards the least amount of hate, versus the environment that rewards it for fulfillment, pulls social media — and people — out of bounds.
The only thing that can stop the slide is slowing down. That correction should be done by people who understand the meaning of the meaning, rather than trying to match the answers with simple rules. But self-control costs money. Good management costs a lot of money.
And why would Mark Zuckerberg or Elon Musk want to control it in the first place? This is an annoying economy. Bring on the anger.