Content masquerading as news or commentary has been degrading actual informational quality since Fox News industrialized the broadcasting of propaganda that looked and tasted like “news” nearly 30 years ago. However, the advent of social media formats hyper-optimized for absurdly short texts, tweets or video shorts has made the problem exponentially worse. Short-form focused media requires ANY language included with it to shoulder a much higher burden in attracting attention (any attention, likes or dislikes). The result is language that attempts to put already ineffective “meme” type language on steroids, resulting in references like these:
Representative A Claps Back at Representative B
Senator C Shuts Down Senator D
Person E Called Out by Person F
Actor G EXPOSES Shocking Fraud
Senator H Owns J
Billionare K Destroys L
Epic Takedown of M by N
Celebrity P Dragged on Twitter after Comments
Claps back? Shuts down? Called out? EXPOSES? Owns? Destroys? Epic? Dragged?
Duuuuuuuuude….
Are the “creators” pushing this content twelve years old? This is the ultimate in bad language because it catastrophically fails at two levels. First, on the surface, this language SELDOM if ever accurately portrays the nature of the interaction being covered. It is usually overstating the impact of the exchange by an order of magnitude in terms of what was accomplished during that exchange or what was prevented from happening in that larger context. Those involved are often politicians. It's thus already clear many have no shame in being caught lying or pushing corrupt agendas of their PAC donors.
More importantly, though, these passive aggressive terms used so commonly in personal communications reflect problems with the social mindset of people addicted to social media. We have over a decade of experience with “Karens” (not exclusively female...) loose in the wild. Karens are people who have been fed a highly curated stream of negative content designed for and targeted towards them to make them feel superior to others while supporting extreme attitudes and policies driven by ignorance and hate. A continuous diet of such content not only makes Karens stupid and hateful, it acclimates them to screaming back through their screen at all those “others” as they digest hours of that content every day. Of course, that feeling of entitlement to hate others spills into real life on the street when they encounter actual “others” they’ve been hating at home for months.
But Karen behavior isn’t the only problem created by 24x7 diets of curated social media content. Imagine a day where news of a committee meeting on Capital Hill pointed out a looming disaster in the operation of a government agency or a gross violation of a citizen’s rights or a blatantly corrupt elected official. Before social media technologies existed, a citizen hearing that news might have been tempted to
- write a paper letter to their elected official
- write a paper letter to the elected official involved with the hearing (even if not their elected official)
- share the story with like-minded friends via email, letter or phone call
- sit back and do nothing, saying “I hate politics”
In the current era polluted by AI generated content and automated fake likes, citizens still have all of the old tools above for responding to such news at their disposal, but they also have new ones unique to social media:
- like or upvote the snippet that drew their attention
- retweet / forward that snippet under their online identity / avatar
- do nothing, assuming that the idiotic official who needs a head slap just got it via the negative social media attention
- send an email to their elected official via a restrictive web form on a Congressional web site which likely gets electronically sorted and counted and never read directly
- send an email to the elected official involved with the hearing (even if not their own) via a restrictive web form on a Congressional web site which likely gets electronically sorted and counted and never read directly
For millions who grew up with social media platforms as children and who likely view online references to them as the worst possible “dis”, it seems likely that many citizens assume a pithy, pugnacious tweet is enough to “shame” a bad guy, help encourage a downdraft in that bad guy’s public personna and eventually stop whatever they were trying to do. Internet karma will eventually achieve their desired result. It’s tempting to think that, when you stare at your phone for four hours a day and see fifty tweets or video links with these titles, surely the public has caught on. But remember, much of the content is auto-generated and a large share of the likes and comments related to those content items are auto-generated as well. There's no guarantee that ANY particular item seen online was generated by a human who was "engaged."
Unfortunately, as already mentioned, people attracted to money and power often lack any of the shame chromosomes present in normal humans and are virtually immune to feelings of regret after being “called out” or “dragged” on social media platforms. More importantly, Congress and the courts don’t operate on a “like” basis nor care who gets “owned” on X or BlueSky or Instagram. Those getting dissed on social media MIGHT eventually fall out of favor and lose power but they can still do an enormous amount of harm until internet karma catches up.
The reality is that all of this “owning” and “clapping back” almost NEVER succeeds at meaningfully stopping an opponent in the short term yet that citizen has likely been pacified to the point of not doing anything. This pacification is not the goal of those creating content with these childish language memes but it is VERY likely the exact outcome they are producing with their work. And this apathy and inaction is EXACTLY what those on the other side of that issue want to see.
If you’re a member of the chattering class, the commentariat, a podcaster regurgitating other people’s work as new insight, etc. and you wrap your “content” with this type of terminology, STOP. Your “content” might be collecting views and likes and subscribers but it is NOT likely triggering true engagement where it matters. You are not educating your content consumer, you are simply lulling them into thinking justice has been served and no further action on their part is required.
If you frequently read or watch content that uses this type of language incessantly, you need to find better sources of news and opinion. Any source relying on this type of language is reinforcing (for one side or the other) the existing tribalism that allowed the masses to be more easily separated from their own money. Sites using this type of language are highly unlikely to be actually explaining the mechanics of an issue and how possibly both “sides” are failing to frame an appropriate solution that doesn’t entrench the status quo.
WTH
