SOTTREADER
The Living Force
Sorry for going off-topic but I feel this is somewhat relevant and it's a subject rarely discussed in the forum.
The subject is that social media for some people is a viable income stream e.g. YouTube and the like. The more engagement people can get to a video, the more "money" they get from creating content. This is a 10-minute video from a fitness influencer explaining and showing what he earns via his social media presence. I thought he broke it down well, showing how you can diversify your income stream from your content.
Mind you, this is from a fitness angle, but you get the point. Social media for content creator = money in their pockets.
Right, why have I brought this up. I'm bringing this up because it's well-known, and backed by various pieces of research that negative or controversial content drives engagement. Remember, more engagement = money for content creators who monetize their content.
www.socialmediatoday.com
Is this me saying all these guys making all these controversial videos are all about making money for themselves. That is, am I being extremely cynical to the extent of throwing the baby out with the bathwater?
Nope, I'm just going back to some of the core principles of the forum, which is about figuring out our automatic reactions system 2 v system 1.
I just think it's worth always bearing in mind that negative or controversy always drives engagement, and there are incentives to keep it that way because money is involved. That means that we are awash with negative stuff - you have the true negative stuff, but then you have all the false negative stuff. Why? Because social content creators want engagement and this is a cheat code to get higher engagement.
Recent examples, What's the name of that interstellar object, 3I/ATLAS, noticed how it's not just a rock, it's an alien spaceship coming our way. How wonderful... clearly an alien spaceship would drive engagement more than it being just an interstellar rock zipping through space. Ps, I'm not saying the Nephilim aren't on their way, for all I know they could be here by October.
I'm just saying that we have been evolutionary wired to be so biased at jumping to the worst possible negative conclusions from the smallest pieces of evidence (think caveman seeing leaves slightly rustling from his peripheral vision and immediately concluding a grizzly bear is in the bush) obviously because it pays from a survival perspective to assume the worst and be wrong, than assume the best and be wrong.
But does this wiring really work in the modern world if we blindly follow it, or does it leave our machine open to being manipulated?
I don't want to be a spoil sport by not just blindly believing the latest viral video going through twitter, YouTube or whatever. I thought I'd just go back to remembering some of the core principles of this forum.
Final thoughts, this guy who runs that modernity channel, I remember seeing him producing exactly the same content for so many years I've lost count how long he's been around for. Clearly it is his job... My question is, if his audience are into a specific type of content, surely he is imprisoned to producing that content until basically he retires and is no longer of working age. Otherwise he'll end up in a boring 9-5 (and none of these social content creators want that) or somehow reinvent himself online. Maybe I'm being cynical but I see this "doom and gloom" thing spreading at the moment about the UK as an industry that can probably be valued if someone cared to do the maths on it - just like there's a fitness online industry, there's a doom and gloom online industry (no other way to put it). I'm not saying we aren't all doomed (of course we are, think how boring life would be if we had nothing to worry about!), all I'm saying is doom has now been monetized, capitalised, whatever you want to call it. Worth bearing that in mind next time the next viral video whizzes through your twitter or YouTube page like the latest interstellar object whizzing through the solar system.
Right, enough of that boring stuff. Back to the topic of the thread - The UK is doomed. @axj we're all coming to Paraguay, better make some space.
The subject is that social media for some people is a viable income stream e.g. YouTube and the like. The more engagement people can get to a video, the more "money" they get from creating content. This is a 10-minute video from a fitness influencer explaining and showing what he earns via his social media presence. I thought he broke it down well, showing how you can diversify your income stream from your content.
Mind you, this is from a fitness angle, but you get the point. Social media for content creator = money in their pockets.
Right, why have I brought this up. I'm bringing this up because it's well-known, and backed by various pieces of research that negative or controversial content drives engagement. Remember, more engagement = money for content creators who monetize their content.

Report Finds No Correlation Between Social Media Engagement and Content Readership
More comments and likes doesn't necessarily lead to more clicks.
You won’t believe the results:
“Despite there being more positive coverage in our article sample, social engagement was higher per article among negative articles.”
Wow, what a surprise, posts that have a more negative than positive tilt generate more engagement online.![]()
Which is the core of the problem with the current incentives of digital media, in that you’re going to get far more attention for saying something controversial than you are by providing balanced, unbiased reporting.
That then motivates the worst actors to adopt personas in order to align with this. You see this with sports media all the time, with commentators sharing the most illogical takes in order to spark subsequent debate, and get themselves more attention.
That’s now, unfortunately, filtered into politics as well, with partisan, sports commentator like perspectives driving more benefit in the social media age. Which is how populist politicians are able to gain so much traction, because they look to summarize incredibly complex political issues into simple, meme-style takes, quotes that can then be pasted over an image, and re-shared en masse.
The problem is, nothing is that simple. Yet, that’s what people want, good versus bad, right versus wrong.
Saying that one side of a conflict is in the right may, in itself, feel righteous, but understanding the full complexity of what’s led to that situation requires far more patience, nuance and understanding.
No one’s got time for that, so you end up with argument, and in that scenario, it’s not about who’s more informed or more thoughtful. It’s about right and wrong, based on whatever each person taking part chooses to believe.
And given the engagement that comes with negative content, you can also see how these simplified takes gain traction online.
I love a good social media debate. Sometimes, I’ll do a controversial or political post and let it ride; grab some SkinnyPop Popcorn, sit back, and watch everyone go cray cray.
It’s quite entertaining, and it drives up my engagement numbers, which kicks in the algorithms which push my posts to the top of everyone’s feed.
Mission accomplished. And no, I am not a sadist.
Negative bias creates greater engagement.
According to AdWeek, Negative information is 63% more likely to be clicked on than positive information.
I noticed that when I do inspirational or personal growth posts, they don’t get nearly the level of engagement. They get a smattering of thumbs-up, care, and heart responses and maybe a few comments, but they don’t really spark an actual conversation between people on my page like the more controversial ones do.
Is this me saying all these guys making all these controversial videos are all about making money for themselves. That is, am I being extremely cynical to the extent of throwing the baby out with the bathwater?
Nope, I'm just going back to some of the core principles of the forum, which is about figuring out our automatic reactions system 2 v system 1.
I just think it's worth always bearing in mind that negative or controversy always drives engagement, and there are incentives to keep it that way because money is involved. That means that we are awash with negative stuff - you have the true negative stuff, but then you have all the false negative stuff. Why? Because social content creators want engagement and this is a cheat code to get higher engagement.
Recent examples, What's the name of that interstellar object, 3I/ATLAS, noticed how it's not just a rock, it's an alien spaceship coming our way. How wonderful... clearly an alien spaceship would drive engagement more than it being just an interstellar rock zipping through space. Ps, I'm not saying the Nephilim aren't on their way, for all I know they could be here by October.
I'm just saying that we have been evolutionary wired to be so biased at jumping to the worst possible negative conclusions from the smallest pieces of evidence (think caveman seeing leaves slightly rustling from his peripheral vision and immediately concluding a grizzly bear is in the bush) obviously because it pays from a survival perspective to assume the worst and be wrong, than assume the best and be wrong.
But does this wiring really work in the modern world if we blindly follow it, or does it leave our machine open to being manipulated?
I don't want to be a spoil sport by not just blindly believing the latest viral video going through twitter, YouTube or whatever. I thought I'd just go back to remembering some of the core principles of this forum.
Final thoughts, this guy who runs that modernity channel, I remember seeing him producing exactly the same content for so many years I've lost count how long he's been around for. Clearly it is his job... My question is, if his audience are into a specific type of content, surely he is imprisoned to producing that content until basically he retires and is no longer of working age. Otherwise he'll end up in a boring 9-5 (and none of these social content creators want that) or somehow reinvent himself online. Maybe I'm being cynical but I see this "doom and gloom" thing spreading at the moment about the UK as an industry that can probably be valued if someone cared to do the maths on it - just like there's a fitness online industry, there's a doom and gloom online industry (no other way to put it). I'm not saying we aren't all doomed (of course we are, think how boring life would be if we had nothing to worry about!), all I'm saying is doom has now been monetized, capitalised, whatever you want to call it. Worth bearing that in mind next time the next viral video whizzes through your twitter or YouTube page like the latest interstellar object whizzing through the solar system.
Right, enough of that boring stuff. Back to the topic of the thread - The UK is doomed. @axj we're all coming to Paraguay, better make some space.