How Powerful Narratives Shape Our Reality Using Polarizing Triggers. Should You Fight Back?
Content was once king. Now distribution and audience rule. People with the biggest audience are now incentivized to distribute their narrative to anyone willing to buy it.
I. Social Media Catfights
A young man, standing towards the far end of a dark bar, pulls a lighter from his pocket, lights a cigarette, and watches two grown men pummel one another with their fists. The scene is gruesome a real barn-burner, but he won’t turn away and keeps watching; standing and staring, transfixed at the broken bodies beating and bashing each other.
In the next moment, three new people join the fight. Then two more. And more. And then more. All this continues to happen while the young man stands watching, smoking his cigarette, blowing smoke towards the ceiling. He has no idea why any of these people are beating one another mercilessly. Yet they keep going.
This is what it feels like getting sucked into the culture wars and conspiracy theory arguments on social media. But with less blood.
II. Competing Narratives
Social media is a clown show of competing narratives. Some are powerful and lock people in; others are people shitposting “for the lols”. And sometimes these are the same post. Shitposting became in vogue when Twitter/X instituted the creator revenue sharing policy a few years back. Twitter/X takes the money made from advertising and pays out sums to accounts fitting within certain guidelines. Big accounts loved it; small accounts felt the FOMO; and shitposting ascended to a whole new level.
Charlie Munger, Warren Buffet’s famous business partner, has been quoted as saying “Show me the incentives and I’ll show you the results”. Opening any social media network is a lesson in this direct quote. People will write whatever they think will grab them attention. Some copy and paste direct from other accounts. When the incentive is “make money from your post here”, folks are going to start acting in unhinged ways. The content slop of AI isn’t slowing down this train either; it’s now speeding up.
Twitter/X has a program called Community Notes. It was once called Birdwatch. Click on the link in previous paragraph if you have no idea what I’m writing about. Anyway, at one point you could sign up for it and, once accepted, gain access to tweets people were complaining about. The point of the program is to “create a better informed world by empowering people on X to collaborate and add context to potentially misleading posts.” For the most part it seems to work. Over the years, many posts will suddenly light up with a banner on the bottom of it. When you click on it, you can see what the problem is with the tweet. It isn’t perfect, but it is a start.
III. A Problem with Incentives
This incentive problem shows how content creation and distribution has changed over the last few years. There was the Gates memo from the 90’s where Bill wrote “Content is King”. In it he argues content is where the real money will be made on the internet. 30 years later, and he was right in a way.
When everyone becomes a content creator, including software (AI SLOP! WHAT, WHAT!), then the flood of content can be overwhelming. Great content once took time to create; now it can be done in seconds. (Not saying this is a good thing). When the scarcity disappears and supply increases, then demand decreases and any value created lowers. One great example of this that makes everyone mad is music royalties. The streamers pay artists a pittance. I could go further, but that will be for another day.
Where is the value now accruing? Audience and distribution. Distribution is primarily owned by tech and some media companies. A great way to think about who owns distribution is to find out who owns and runs powerful ad networks. Distribution is the pipeline pushing your message or offer into the world; towards your intended audience, the other side of the equation.
Building a captive audience is a skill; not an easy one either. A popular aspect of building an audience is anyone can do it with a smartphone and access to the internet. This is the thesis of what is being called New Media. You make the content, and then you push your content out through the distribution channels using organic or paid reach. And it is all the better if you have a huge audience or are on the way to building one. Most people DO NOT have a huge audience, but they are happy to share with the one they do have.
So, once upon a time content was king. Now distribution and audience is king and content is what AI creates while laughing you out of a job. Content has become a great flood, overtaking the internet. When we were young, the narrative said AI would be big scary robots and Sarah Connor with a machine gun smoking a cigarette. This isn’t what happened at all. AI is a baseline content creator shoving its creations through the pipelines of the distributors. Or it’s writing your emails using a Mac-mini and talking shit about you on a private social network.
So what happens when you take all of these new media tools and incentivize people using them to build an audience doing whatever it takes? You have anon’s copying and pasting straight from other accounts (see example above). You have people making shit up just to hitch a ride on the algorithm. You have AI slop writing about how to create AI slop using AI. This is what we are dealing with now. People willing to do and say whatever is needed to build an audience and a hungry audience of people willing to believe them. Shitposting leads to a shitsandwhich of shitty opportunities for shitheads. Shit.
IV. Polarizing Views Build the Biggest Audience
The common thread tying this type of posting is the polarizing view. This is an old trick from direct response marketing. Trigger the reader towards a polarizing POV, and keep them reading. Then, funnel them towards a call-to-action (CTA) and, hopefully, they will engage and take action.
Your average person thinks of social media as a place to go talk to friends. The real pros know something deeper; it’s a war zone of narrative disruptions. They see a funnel from their profile or post straight to their wallet. It’s wild when you come across these accounts and learn how they are doing it. Digital marketing at its finest.
Most of the time these accounts are straight-forward with what they are selling to you. And you can either choose to ignore them or engage. It’s up to you. What’s most bothersome are the accounts built on misinformation, which draw people in. (I don’t have an example here because many times these accounts are shut down fast). These are the accounts peddling conspiracy theories non-stop. Then, when you go to their profile to find out what this shmuck looks like, and click the link in the header, it might take you to some ecommerce page with an animated gorilla hard selling you on supplements.
V. Narrative Power
This is the point of a tool like Community Notes and why I wish it was only the start. Narratives can have power over people. And narratives can tear reality apart. When enough people believe a false narrative is true, it will become true not on fact, but on perceptions. This is why the conspiracy accounts can get away with what they do. And it’s why we need more tools to fight against it.
Culture is driven through narratives; it always has been. The internet makes it more apparent to those willing to dig deep enough to find them. Most of the time they are hidden in the mess of the great and ongoing content flood. Until then, you will be like the guy at the beginning of the story: watching people pummel one another for non-sensical reasons. They are fighting over narratives. You should join the fight too.