Doctor Mike

And this is where, unfortunately, the incentive that I think the piece that gets missed is a lot of times you'll see media write about the influencer or about the algorithm, right?

So the algorithm makes people do a thing.

It removes the agency from the people clicking on it.

Yeah, it went viral.

It's like the passive voice.

No, it went viral because people clicked.

That's what happened.

Everybody clicked at the button.

I mean, the algorithms can do better.

We can talk about how, but it removes the agency from the people.

The influencer is responding bidirectionally to the feedback they're getting from the audience.

I talk about this with friends who are, they study their YouTube, like, oh, people drop off here, they drop off there, this title performs better, that thumbnail performs better.

But what the crowd is getting out of it also is like, this person is speaking for me.

Like in that political realm in particular, this person is advocating for me, they're fighting for me, and they're really in it.

They're also very excited when they create a meme or they create content.

Like there's a very active participation there where they feel like,

I made the meme of Donald Trump with the kitten that JD Vance retweeted.

And that is such a huge moment for them.

So that act of political participation is so much of what drives the political dynamics of what happens on social media.

And that incentivizes the politicians in turn to engage in that way as well.