Kittens, Pastries and Bad Advice
Trolls of the world work on the premise that “conflict is attention” and they can never get enough attention. Today, our “besties” in the social media world frequently succumb to trolling-style posts that would’ve gotten them warnings or even banning in the Olden Days of Usenet and similar forums. “Negging” — posting a negative comment in someone’s social media post, especially if that post is positive, effusive or hopeful — occurs every few minutes, even in my carefully curated feeds. The spectrum of conflict on the Internet has always veered a bit to the red. These days, we now need various SHADES of red.
My own grandpa used to say that my grandmother was “simmering and coming to a boil” to identify her bad moods. When someone is always in a bad mood, a little angry, a little tired, a little frustrated, it’s easier to push their buttons and bring them to that emotional boil of anger — and incapacity. That is the grand strategy of many information actors on the Internet. Conflict is hard to turn away from.
We all want the “last word” in an argument. Social media platforms have algorithms that make sure we never really get it.
Many emotions are contagious, but anger is contagious like nothing else. In his funny and instructive video, CPG Grey’s “This video will make you angry.” walks us through the attention economy, explaining in simple terms that “ideas fight for space in your brain.” Each thought we have has to compete with other thoughts coming in from the world around us. The Internet provides us with tremendous amounts of thoughts and ideas. More importantly, the Internet provides us with the means to change and re-distribute those ideas, similarly to how we catch colds. We not only catch colds, we can mutate those colds and spread them everywhere. CPG Grey explain that a “cute cat picture” changed and improved by many hands has the capacity to become a kind of “superflu” of the brain. We see it. we laugh, we share it, some of us change it and make it “cuter” until the cat picture is everywhere.
And then it dies. Overexposure is like that. Oh, we’ve seen that. Next thing, please.
Anger, on the other hand, breeds not only attacks against ‘those guys’ (the enemy, the hated ones) but also spurs conversation within the group about why ‘those guys’ are so repugnant. Many of us also exaggerate, make up stories about the other side, and generally compete with each other like a dysfunctional family talking about trash about how terrible Uncle Freddie or Aunt Marge. This is usually done in their absence, but nowadays, things are so bad, we’re fighting each other in their actual presence. Or at least, that’s how social media platforms work.
When we diss Aunt Margaret’s apple pie-making skills behind her back, we in the South usually preface this with a “Bless her heart.” That stuff doesn’t cut it when Aunt Marge has walked in, especially if she’s got that pie in hand. If this happens in front of the whole family, then we got some heavy apologizing to do, at minimum, if our dysfunctional family has any decency at all.
This is the thing about being offended. It hurts. It makes us angry. It bring us to an emotional simmer — and that makes it far, far easier to bring us to an emotional boil. And that’s what disruptors do, they invade our social networks, set up shop, and proceed to “neg,” fume, rage, and attack.
Attacks on individual accounts by disruptors is anecdotally on the rise. It’s hard to get precise figures on this phenomenon, this “mob commentary” and mobbed social cyber-attack. Back in the day (say, 2014) we in the research community had the facts to say that this stuff was totally bot-driven, but nowadays, thousands of people are doing this as a dark hobby. Many times those hobbyist disruptors also have access to tools and knowledge to pursue their hobby at very large scale. Others just hang out in forums to share targetting strategies — and then all of them have a go at selected targets.
Some facts about disruptors: today most of them are inflamed true-believers, simply aping the trolling tactics of others. Other disruptors are professionals, paid by foreign state and non-state actors in many cases, or by public relations companies. These professional tactics are going to expand, with machine-learning algorithms and capabilities to create fake material, sort of fake material and increasingly sophisticated content designed to hit our emotional cores. Once we are badly hit, like poor Aunt Marge, we have only two things we can do: fight or flight. Our brains can’t function well enough to do anything else.
And that is exactly what the disruptors want to happen. They want to shut down productive conversation and destroy consensus among their adversaries. The destruction of incivility is deliberate.
Emotional body-slams on the Internet are on par with the insult and indignity felt by Aunt Marge. She might go off, yelling at everyone, and people just tuning in to the conversation think it’s MARGE who is the cause of the problem. If she slinks off to cry, then the problem doesn’t exactly solve itself. Marge has sisters and cousins and they know the evil talk and tittle-tattle around here, and they will come down on those folks responsible. The situation can deteroriate drastically. This is what the trolls want. Confusion, anger and bad feeling all around.
Now, let’s imagine that Aunt Marge knows all about the trash-talking going on about her (and probably lots of other people) at the family reunion. She knows that there are Reasons for this trash-talk, Reasons that have only a little to do with her pie-making, but mostly to do with Other Things (for instance, getting Aunt Marge cut out of the will). Some sneaky, low-life cousins think they can get her to stop coming to these reunions by making her upset. Knowing this can help Marge armor up and head in, pie in hand, knowing these scumbags cousins for who they are and what they are about. Why, then Marge, frosty smile in place, can march into the dining room, pie in hand, and manage to keep her wits about her. This is not about pie. This is about something more important.
Staying Angry is Bad Advice
This is what’s going on in political Twitter these days. There is a common theme going around, pushed by the disruptors and taken up by their inflamed victims: “stay angry.” But staying angry does NOT get you what they say it will. It’s a trick to keep us incapacitated. It’s a trick to make us weak.
The bigger point is to stay committed. We have to out-think our smarmy, low-life cousins who want the inheritance (of the election) all to themselves. We are all entitled to participation in these events and these conversations. We also have to protect ourselves — and one another.
A few tips for dealing with smarmy cousins on the Internet. The first step is to avoid self-intoxication with too much negativity on one’s feed.
I’ve decided, for myself, to unfollow or mute accounts whose snark and bombast are cluttering my feed and making me annoyed, frustrated and angry just in general. Goodbye, au revoir, have a nice 2020. I unfollow all the time and I’m not worried about the fact that they might unfollow me in some sort of “retaliation.”
I look around to replace them with smarter people, better sources, and more thoughtful content creators. This will make me smarter and help to keep me calm. It’s like Aunt Marge walking in the family reunion with Cousin Bob, the family lawyer, and Uncle George, the family pastor. And maybe her little dog, Esmerelda. We all need support on the Internet. We have to look for it.
It’s not that I want to live in a filter bubbly with only Happy Thoughts. I want to fill my feed with content that makes me stronger, not weaker. And I want to distribute content that helps people to think. Pointless, angry content is designed to make us mindlessly react. They are creating the Borg. We have to fight them off, including reducing contact with our dear ones who have surrendered to it — at least enough to reduce our exposure to their disease.
We have to remember that we want Good Trouble, as John Lewis so famously has said. He’s not a man known for flying off the handle. He’s a wise, old man (may he beat this awful cancer).
We also can report trolling, mobbing attacks to Twitter and help people learn how to block attackers. Twitter does notice when many people are blocking an account and at least for the tiny, anonymous new accounts, this matters. Block and report. And warn others.
Remember that ignoring attacks on oneself makes the disruptors go away in search of someone else to “trigger.” This is definitely true if you are a nobody. If you become an influencer, then, honey, you got problems.
Influencers, people with over 5 or 10K followers, are always big, shiny targets. You have two choices: adapt and endure, or make your Twitter account private (and here’s how.)
Fighting Angrily is Fighting Stupidly
If we find ourselves getting tired and angry, it’s time to walk away from the Internet. Listen to music, take a walk, go to the gym. Walk the dog. Pet the kitty.
If we’re not tired and we want to enter into the good fight and make Good Trouble, we are NOT going to be EFFECTIVE in the BIG CONCERN by going negative, attacking others, and aping their tactics because THIS IS HOW THEY WIN. There are tons of research on this. For a really eye-popping journalistic read, I highly recommend the book “Antisocial: Online Extremists, Techno-Utopians, and the Hijacking of the American Conversation” by Andrew Marantz.
Good Trouble is NOT spreading Stupid Stuff on the Internet
Today we have rumor and distorted stories, unverified opinions that are running us ragged. Candidate Q is hated by her/his staff is a big one — this is usually used on women candidates. Candidate X wants a Republican for a Vice President (even though it was a hypothetical question and a set up for a sound bite, lots of people fell for that one). There are so many allegations, rumors, and frankly stupid stuff floating around on Twitter that it’s surprising we can make sense of the world at all.
That’s how the disruptors want it. That’s how they win. Think before you retweet. Investigate a story before you get all mad and stuff. Take breaks and take care of yourself — and the Aunt Marges of the world. And mind your manners. That’s how we win in the big picture.
POSTSCRIPT: Grandma’s Tips — Making Your Account Private
If you get attacked or you’re afraid of being attacked, you can consider making your account private.
When you make your account private, only those whom you ALLOW to follow you can see your tweets. Your current followers will continue to see them, but people who don’t follow you, can’t see them. New followers will have to ask you to allow them to follow you. Then, you can be picky.
This won’t protect you from screenshots. If someone who follows you takes a picture of your tweet and reposts it, you CAN get them suspended from Twitter if you can report (and of course document) it but it will be up to Twitter to make the call.
Further, if you later make your tweets public again, then those tweets you put out while your account was protected all become public. You’d have to go back and delete every tweet first.
This “nuclear option” does limit the things you can do. For example, if you are replying to a tweet from someone who does not follow you, then that person won’t see your reply. You basically are removing yourself from the broader discourses in Twitter. It’s like staying in a back room at the family gathering — your voice will matter somewhat less to the wider world.
It’s better to have better manners and to walk into the party knowing that this is a fight. But fighting angry is fighting stupidly.
Y’all be good now. Thanks for dropping by and visiting the Social Media Grandma.
