Write Words - Make Magic

My latest #ambigram project. What do you think?

It's been real

Red Wings

this is insane

It's sickening that there are people and companies out there that financially rely on making other people on this planet upset enough to comment rage or ridicule on their posts. It's honestly insane that we're at this point in social media monetization where that's happening.

I know, I'm just trying to play with the phrasing in such a way to counteract that feeling, haha.

It is a huge problem with social media that bait works so well and is financially rewarded. The moment that stops, so much of the slop goes away.

They honestly would go broke if people didn't engage with their stuff. They would suffer if people stopped ridiculing them.

This feeling is what they're relying on, nay financially depending on, when they craft their bait.

What are you confused about? I'm happy you're not engaging with rage bait

"downside risk" rather.

If you're not engaging with the rage-bait and ridicule-bait, than that's really good! Earlier in this conversation it seemed like you were saying that you would engage with it and not worry about the "tail risk" so I was confused.

Glad to hear you're not spreading the rage-bait.

Their target market is otherwise well-meaning people who think they're clapping back or ridiculing the content when really they're helping it spread by engaging with it.

rage-bait and ridicule-bait channels survive and monetize almost solely because of that refusal.

Agreed. The only think I caution is to make sure not to amplify or increase the engagement in the message that you're trying to argue against.

I totally agree that misinformation and bad opinions should be called out, but only in a way that doesn't amplify the content you're trying to argue against.

Rage-bait and ridicule-bait are so effective because people can't help but share it with others. This is exactly what they want to happen.

The more people who see the opinions, the more likely someone is to think it's a legitimate opinion. If they disagree with the person doing the ridiculing on some other issue, they might decide that this opinion is worth having as well.

I'll amend that: the people posting that content solely to make money on ad revenue from the views will go away. There will still be people with those opinions, but not the grifters.

I think that the tweet genre of “this person (who might be a bot) had a bizarre opinion that made me think less of humanity and so the right thing by to do is screenshot it and show it to the largest number of people” is silly.

The amplification of fringe opinions to be considered "what everyone thinks" is so damaging to society

The way to counteract that feeling is to truly realize that they won't feel bad. You're helping them accomplish their goals.

It's a combination of:
1. monetization of views on social media
2. Algorithms that determine reach based on engagement

It's engagement farming all the way down

Sure, but before social media algorithms, that action didn't quite cause the same level of "oh, this content sure is getting engagement, people must really like it. I'll show it to even more people" aspect

That's what the checkmarks are intended to do, although I'm not sure they quite do that yet

They do if enough people do

The problem is, sharing it on social media platforms that determine reach from engagement is never going to clamp it down. Only when algorithms stop being designed this way can it be helpful to call it out in that way

It's a huge problem in that it strawmans the other side so heavily that no one thinks the other side is redeemable in any way

We need to figure out how to disincentivize that behavior

If people stopped sharing the bad opinions to try and ridicule them, maybe the out of pocket things wouldn't have spread so widely

The whole genre of content that consists of amplifying bad opinions to ridicule them is frustrating. We need to give them less visibility on social media, not amplify them.