Master rage baiter
It sure knows how to turn you on
Sadly for us, the platform’s AI has decoded our species’ fatal flaw while just trying to complete its prime directive; keep our attention at all costs. And we, these pissy, hairless apes unknowingly led it right to our rage. “Hi, our name is Achilles and this is our heel.” Darwin seems to have missed a few details about us humans. Up here at the top of the food chain, genetically pre-programmed for stress, it’s survival of the maddest. So let’s take a second and think about why we’re doing what we’re doing, before we yank the arm on the cortisol slot machine to find one more video to ring that little red bell in our ancient amygdalae.
It is a reflection of us. In a way it is us, and that’s how it knows just what we want. Our own sexy little temptress feeding us just the right words to get us riled up, hot under the collar, all red cheeked and anger horny. It’s the devil on our shoulder fiddling with our emotions, giving us that perfect combination of outrageous words we can’t hardly believe were said. Here it is on your gold plated swipe tray. Your algorithmically attuned bile smoothie just how you like it, ready to make the veins on your forehead bulge with the fury of a thousand headlines. Get the adrenal gland ready for action, but there can be no flight in the content receiving, craned neck, couch slumped position, so fight we must. “Come on baby, don’t you want to know the evil, affront to democracy that just happened? The news didn’t report it. You’re the first to hear it. Dontcha wanna be the one to share it? Rally the troops. Once more into the breach!”
Who cares if it rips families apart? Who cares if it yanks the threads that hold our society together? Nah, don’t worry. We just want to see one more video before we go to bed. Just one more clip to fire us up. Nothing up the middle, thanks. Where’s the fun in the rational? Nope, indignation is the hottest seductress, because it makes us feel righteous. Gives us purpose. Our fury feels productive. We’re doing quality missionary position missionary work on society. Sharing the algo god’s good word daily. And on the other end of your video is a creator so very glad you’ve chosen to pick their specific outrage scab. Your view-thru rate teaches them the best of all lessons. That partial truth is the perfect truth. Just true enough. He’s so pleased his public is banging their spoons in their feed bowls begging like Ollie Twist. “Please sir, can we rage some more?”
Wouldn’t it be nice if we could get a hold of our stress predisposition and go back to being mid in this time of extreme hyperbole? Can we turn back the clock on everything being either 0 or 100? There was a world, just a few short years ago, where nothing was the greatest ever, the absolute worst, most vile, truly incredible, heinous, extreme, totally insane. Mr. Dickens please amend your best of times and worst of times. Can we just be the sort-of-okay of times? A world with no rage-baited, semi-true hooks wriggling in front of us like plump worms begging for a nibble. Can we realize that most of us are not nazis or liblunatics. Most of us are just regular people whose hearts aren’t balled up in fists. What would it take for us to turn our backs on the VIP, red dress, anger siren and opt instead for a beige suited, frumpy, factual middle manager? Can we, as a society, just order the chicken?
Of course there are plenty of bad people out there doing very bad things desperate to spread their badness. Always have been, always will be. And they need to be stopped and held accountable. But what if all this righteous indignation is their tool? What if in our hungry hungry hippo hunt to solve the problem we’re playing right into their hands. What if they themselves are the dopamine drug dealers whispering, “Pssst! Hey kid, wanna see the worst thing ever?” We’ve been told our whole lives that progress in any direction comes from the ones brave enough to make a change. Maybe today bravery looks a bit different. Maybe bravery today is reprogramming that masturbatory, little bit of old genetic fight-or-flight hormone into something more modern. “Think then think then maybe act.” Maybe next time we see something that just gets our goat we sit on it, examine it, understand it, and then sprinkle some of that other, decidedly less sexy, but very human spice on it. Rational thought.
Maybe then we’ll see that sharing isn’t always caring.
It’s strange, but I now have the inverse response to that type of stuff. If I even smell that something is trying to manipulate a response from me (good or bad to be honest), I’m like, nope.
Words to live by: Think then think then maybe act.