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Hello Facebook friends!
Lately, I've noticed that the line between spreading awareness and making-shitty-people-powerful has become a bit...blurry.
Blurred Lines make me uncomfortable.
To be fair, shitty people have always had a massive audience, but they've largely been confined to YouTube comments and anonymous forums, which makes sharing more difficult. With the recent surge of political posts on Facebook, these content creators have found a new, lucrative, and free advertising channel - the timelines of people who hate them.
If I was more honest with my title, it'd probably say "Hey you, I know you're angry, but stop for a second and reconsider Share-ing that viral video/tweet of someone's morally shaky opinion."
But why does YOUR Share matter? Well, let me hop on my soapbox real quick.
We live in the Viral Age.
Fig 1.2: A thought lands on the surface of a brain.
It's all fun and games when Gangnam Style goes viral, but in this day and age, going viral is THE way to make sure the world pays attention to you. Given the power to instantly share anything from your newsfeed onto your timeline, you get to decide whether to pass on the content or to quarantine it. Most of the time, we want others to enjoy the same content that we do, so a Share is an easy decision.
So what's the catch? Just like a real virus, if you choose to share any content, you don't get to decide where it goes next or how far it spreads. While we enjoyed the uncontrollable growth of Gangnam Style, it isn't the same when people are intentionally trying to spread malicious, politically-motivated content. Even if you intended to share a video to ridicule it, you don't get to decide who stops to really listen and how they react to it. For all you know, your Facebook friend twice removed is easily persuaded by confident people in suits.
You're more influential than you think.
Fig 1.3: A reverse funnel system.
Now, you may think that uncontrollable growth means nothing when you get 3 Likes and no Shares for every post you make. While I don't have any hard numbers to back up this next claim, I get the feeling that we all watch and read posts without leaving any trace of interaction. In 2013, Facebook reported that an average user has 338 Facebook friends, and not too long after that, we had access to Facebook's friend rankings (doesn't work anymore). Among my top ranking friends, I noticed that about the top 5 were people that I talked to on a daily basis, but the top 15 or so regularly showed up on my newsfeed.
If you've done any multi-level marketing math before, you'll know that it doesn't take many people to start a chain reaction of Likes and Shares. You don't even need to actively Share a post to spread it; simply reacting to the post or making a comment will expose the content to your friends.
Your clicks and shares are basically a bunch of tiny votes.
Look what your careless hands have wrought.
I like that we're getting used to the idea of voting with our wallets, and the next step is to take online interaction into account. If you dislike our electoral college process or if you don't have any money in your wallet to vote with, then try the other kind of democracy - the internet. On the internet, every view, click, comment, or share is just as valuable as money. We're only limited by the amount of time we have to spend on these websites.
On one hand, it's comforting to know that you're just a statistic on a news outlet's spreadsheet (just kidding, big data is scary as hell, but that's another blog post). On the other hand, news outlets don't care whether or not you liked the post you shared. Simply clicking "Share" means that you've cast a vote saying "yes, this type of content will cause me to drive more traffic to your website."
What the fuck, brain.
Finally, to make our decision-making as hard as possible, our brains are chock full of biases that actively prevent us from processing the information that's presented (not that we have the time to digest everything on our newsfeed).
The first time you show me a Trump tweet, I'm double-checking that it exists on Twitter. The second time you show me a Trump tweet, I'm fact-checking his accusations. The fiftieth time you show me a Trump tweet, I'm just angry because the 140 characters confirm how I already feel about him. The content and legitimacy stops mattering because we all need to take shortcuts to get through a day's worth of information.
It's slightly annoying to see the same shitty behavior from our president day in and day out, but that's not why angry shares are counterproductive. From my perspective, Trump's tweets may confirm how I already feel about him, but confirmation bias works from all perspectives. Perhaps the link that I share confirms someone else's feelings about how scummy the media outlet is, or that people with certain party affiliations will believe *anything*.
So...now what?
For what it's worth, sharing ideas is still generally awesome despite all the pitfalls. We did really well with Kony 2012 (or did we?), the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge, and many other causes in between. It's only when we start compulsively following the trail of breadcrumbs that are designed to make us angry that we relinquish control of our votes. Stay vigilant, be in touch with yourself, and find out where that blurred line is drawn for you.
