Ed Coper

And all of the moderating forces around us normally try to discourage escalation of anger.

So you've got a good example.

If I bump into you in the street and we have a heated argument, there's some physical danger, if not just some social cost to, you know, not getting along with you.

Shouting in the street.

Shouting in the street.

Is regarded as being quite mad.

frowned upon and now let's take some angry social media comment from the internet and let's give an actor you know that script to go stand in the middle of town square and shout that at the top of their lungs everyone would you'd lock them up right they'd be certifiable but it's very normal on the internet because the cost of our anger is removed and the rewards are amplified

People giving you clapbacks, giving you likes.

We all have a great time being angry on social media where we're supposed to be really uncomfortable being angry in real life.

The goal of the social media platforms is to keep you there as long as possible.

They are viral advertising machines at the end of the day.

We live in an attention economy, which really means that human beings have finite attention, and when we have infinite content...

the things that grab our attention will be rewarded.

Now, that's what advertisers do.

Do something that grabs someone's attention to your brand or your ad, you're selling something, and people are going to pay attention to it.

Is that all it is, really?

They're not sitting in a basement in Silicon Valley thinking, how do I destroy the world with viral outrage machines?

Yeah, they're sitting there in Silicon Valley saying, how do I design an algorithm that keeps people engaged?

And the way they do that is to have the algorithm map to human emotions.

And now the problem with that is the strongest emotions we feel are negative ones.