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LAST UPDATE | 18 Jun 2021
AT THIS STAGE, the sequence of events is predictable. A known Horrible Person says a Horrible Thing on a livestream broadcast to only a handful of people online.
The Horrible Thing may involve speaking in a disgusting way about migrants, or a minority group, or sharing dangerous lies that have no foundation in reality. An understandably outraged person sees the Horrible Thing and shares it in a flash of anger and disgust. Before too long, the Horrible Person’s name is trending on Twitter.
This reaction is what I call shock sharing. People often feel the need to call out bad behaviour and our brain actually rewards us with a hit of dopamine when we do, according to this 2004 study. Social media has provided the ultimate tool for us to do this to our heart’s content.
Shock sharing in order to call out hate or lies is an understandable reflex that is hardwired into our brains. For the most part, those doing it believe that they are helping by raising awareness and fighting back. Sharing a Horrible Thing like this, however, causes a chain reaction of further outrage and further shock sharing, while also spreading the Horrible Person’s message to a much wider audience than was initially possible.
Studies have shown that more than any other kind of emotion, rage is the one most likely to drive reaction online. If we see something that gets us fired up, we’re more likely to share it. Many people are aware of this, from marketers to news editors to disinformation purveyors, but none more so than the social media platforms themselves.
Shocking sells
The business model employed by these platforms is centred around keeping people’s eyes on screens for as long as possible in order to target them with advertising. The algorithms, which platforms market to their users as “personalised feeds”, are therefore built to fulfil the needs of the business model by presenting the most engaging content, often content that has shock value, to keep people scrolling for longer.
A lack of transparency around the algorithms means that we’re not quite sure how they work. Can they tell the difference between quality journalism and the uninformed ramblings of a Horrible Person, or do they simply prioritise engagement over any other metrics?
Either way, engaging with content that is hateful, or downright untrue, only serves to boost that content and push it into more people’s feeds.
This cycle of rage and engagement leading to free publicity is especially problematic if the Horrible Person has been booted off mainstream social media platforms for being, well, horrible.
By resharing their content on platforms where they have been explicitly banned, you are providing them with undeserved oxygen and a veneer of relevancy, when in an ideal world the Horrible Person would be cast to fringe platforms and remain there in their own echo chamber.
People and groups who have an interest in spreading disinformation and hateful rhetoric are more than aware of the power of shock sharing and they often produce content with this exact phenomenon in mind.
Pawns in the game
At a pro-Repeal rally in Dublin in 2018, marchers were deceived into carrying placards emblazoned with the symbol for the British Union of Fascists. A user on 4chan, a platform commonly associated with white supremacist and neo-nazi movements, boasted that he and “some mates” had printed the posters and handed them out and that “the morons took the bait”.
The user shared photos from the march and encouraged others to “spread this shit”. The images went viral after campaigners on the anti-Repeal side called for condemnation of the rally-goers.
A year previously, a video recorded at another pro-Repeal event, and produced by a Canadian far-right news outlet, also went viral. The video was a selectively edited series of vox pops where a right-wing activist used provocative questions to evoke answers that made those in attendance seem uninformed and extreme in their beliefs. That activist has since admitted that the video was produced in a way to purposefully provoke outrage and feed the recommendation algorithms.
The real world consequences of outrage-induced shock sharing have only become more evident in recent years. The storming of the US Capitol building in January was a direct result of an abundance of false, deceptive and seductive content being propagated online to make people believe, among other things, that the election had been stolen. Anti-vaxx movements jeopardise the pandemic recovery every day by using false scare stories in order to spread hesitancy and fear over the vaccine.
We live in the era of the never-ending scroll, where we often have no control over what comes up next on our screen. It can be hard to resist the appeal of shock sharing as our Stone Age brains are trying to play catch up with the online world.
We’re in the very early, precarious days of our relationship with the internet and people need to become more mindful of the ripple effects of sharing content that is designed to outrage.
That’s not to say that Horrible Things should never be talked about. Hate and ignorance need to be called out, but this should be done in a way that doesn’t give undue promotion to those responsible for it, especially if their only weapon is stirring up outrage online. If we really want to punish the Horrible People, ignoring them when they say Horrible Things on the internet is the best line of action.
Aoife Gallagher is a research analyst with the counter-extremism think tank, the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, where she investigates how conspiracy and far-right networks use online platforms to spread their messaging.
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Country is booming. Jobs everywhere. Leo doing a great job. It’s tough on the layabouts who have no excuse.
@Chicken George: the economy may be going in the right direction but healthcare is still in a shambles and we still have issues with homelessness. FG may have had some success in some areas but they have had drastic failures in others that need to be addressed and simply aren’t.
@Seán Ó Briain: The economy is going in the right direction… Where did you get that information?
@Fred Croydon: The tax payers provide it. Not “the government” Really important to state that correctly.
@Chicken George:
1)54% workers earning €30,000& under&up to 80,000 on activation schemes not counted in unemployment rate.
2)Last year it was reported that average rents nationwide were 16% higher than their 2008 peak &Daft.ie Report showed rents twice to treble rate of mortgages on similar houses.There has been an increase of 166% in tenants paying landlords more than€300 a week since 2011.
3)Housing stock only increased by 0.4% between 2011-2016.Plus private rented accommodation described as”social housing”
4) Homelessness increased by 81% since 2011&child homelessness increased by 375% since 2014.
Ireland just uses 3/7Categories of ETHOS light Categories.Eoin O Sullivan,Trinity College Report compared Ireland with Denmark,Germany&Hungary who use similar comparisons re homelessless&Ireland ranked the highest (‘How does Ireland’s homeless problem compare with other countries’)No National Emergencies called in Homelessness and Housing.
5)There were €2.7B of cuts to HSE during recession,12,000 less HSE staff,21,000 inpatient drop&30,000 day case drop between 2012-2014,2m home help hours now last year 589,000 on hospital waiting lists and hospital overcrowding at serious levels.No Health Emergency declared.
6) 790,000 people living in poverty,250,000 of which are children and 1m people experiencing deprivation plus 105,000 workers with incomes so low they are living in poverty.
These are just some of the national emergencies facing society.
I don’t know how anyone could live in this country and be so unaware of how many of their fellow citizens are been affected by these very real Emergencies!
@Seán Ó Briain: Ah. you had to ruin it by mentioning healthcare and homelessness
@Chicken George: The usual parts of the country are booming and all the immigrants are happy in this easy to rip off country.
Come back down to earth Chicken George and see how 90 % of the Irish people struggle to make ends meet.
Cc: To the wasters in Givernment
@Fred Croydon
What a idiotic statement ” People choose to be on the street”
Typical Fine Gael attitude, you are not related to Enda Kenny by any chance?
@Fred Croydon: Those who avail of late night shelter are considered homeless (you usually are not allowed in until 9pm or later). Sometimes people don’t want to avail of these services because there are drug users there. You don’t have to be “mentally ill” to want to avoid that.
…But Leo consistently lies, won’t tell the full truth on many issues and also won’t tackle the illegal operations such as is going on in JobPath – that is seeing Million of Euro stolen every year off victims!
What is there to like?
expect Nick Allen (aka mk57) any time now.
@Unitedpeople: that is some chip
On your shoulder … don’t think I’ve ever seen you post anything positive on here …and looking at your social media and website you’d swear that everyone was living in gutters and eating grass …beyond doubt the economy is in growth and hopefully we will have as close to a balanced budget as possible. Moving towards full employment so hopefully the only role of job path will be to find out who the ‘won’t work’ section of society are and try to force them to work rather than live in relative conforms on social welfare .. passing on a tradition of social welfare dependence to their children
@Gggordon: well said
@Jun Stone: Good old Gggordon. Out to smear at every turn those that speak out – but never is able to refute facts actually posted that can be also independely verified.
If Gggordon actually bothered his backside to look fully at Facebook posts he would see more – but then he and his short-sighted fellow mod don’t want to.
Moving towards full employment is great – but at the point of breaking the law to the tune of millions to do it – while the same law breakers tell others not to break the law?
Elected are supposed to lead by example – not act from a gutter they crawled up from.
@Gggordon:
No – you are missing the point – deliberately.
POINT ONE.
Leo Varadkar and Fine Gael are allowing the laws of Ireland to be massive broken while telling others not to break the law – why? Because such law breaking is costing the state millions – ironically, not even as much as the actual millions lost through the Dept of Social Protection for any one year n the last four years. You forgot to mention any of this.
POINT TWO
Yes. MORE millions of Euro is actually lost by the State department itself that is actual lost through fraud within that department. Opps – funny how you skip over the full accurate facts that can be also independently verified.
POINT THREE.
Are you justifying the national breaking of laws to the tune of €70+ Million in 2017 so that far less amounts can be further saved?
On any scale what sort of madness is this?
POINT FOUR
€70 Million Euro is NEVER small scale (to any housing, health or other matters still crying out for further funding) when it comes to state revenue.
POINT FIVE.
It seems you are unwilling to read what’s ever stated – just willing to lie and spin to suit your own warped ideas. Example: http://uploads.im/uigZL.jpg
Carry on to a limited audience that’s foolish to swallow your rubbish.
@Gggordon: By the way, is there is something you don’t like about what’s on any Facebook page you give out about – why don’t you say something?
You won’t – will you?
No. That would mean you might having to further identify yourself.
It might mean you would be further expose for the type of person you might be?
No, just continue the cowards way out and take also digs at my family and I.
It’s about all you’re good – and you give out about others being negative? Irony!
@Unitedpeople: disagree on many parts but I share some concerns on jobpath, it’s not been properly vetted and I smell a tribunal in years to come. The idea is a great one, but the organisation of it is a shambles and tbh a huge con job.
@Unitedpeople: dude .. when I did question you on Twitter and Facebook you blocked me !!! You don’t let people who don’t agree with you engage … your censorship is up there with North Korea !!!
@dec dunne: Governments job isn’t to get things right. Their job is to mess things up and waste money. How else could they justify raising taxes? They need some margins to play with. Getting things right would put them out of a job.
Why does he think Varadkar is fantastic?
I would have thought it’s a fairly obvious followup question.
@methodical2020: I’m no fan of Tubridy but according to the sub-headline the interview was carried out by The Journal.
Of course leo is fantastic, you can live here without paying tax liam as an “atriste” if you so wish, try being a taxpayer under FG, before coming out with your Hollywood bull.
@Trevor Hayden: I’m a taxpayer under FG and not in any way affiliated or supportive of any party and I think Varadkar is doing a good job.
@Dave O Keeffe: That’s entirely your opinion dave and I respect that but as a doctor he not only made a hash of the position of health minister and as Taoiseach couldn’t give a s€€t.
Lives in Castleknock travels to leinster house every day obviously with his eyes shut as to not see or ignore the homeless crisis.
I know there is no quick fix to these issues but at least an attempt to solve the issues would be something.
He in my opinion is following in Enda Kenny’s footsteps pandering to the almighty European Union and to hell with the Irish electorate.
@Trevor Hayden: that’s entirely your opinion and I respect it. Health has been a mess for as long as I can remember and if you really believe there’s nothing at all being done about homelessness you’re not paying attention. There’s a lot being done but as you said there’s no quick fix.
I’d imagine leo and FG are fantastic if you have loads of money, but believe me he’s far from fantastic to the ordinary taxpayer!
Today, according to leo, Ireland was a small EU country when arguing with farage in the EU. Tomorrow Ireland will be a lot bigger so this can be used as an excuse for our govs incompetence on why they can’t fix our homeless and health crisis!
Today leo was comparing Ireland to cities in Europe. He said “We’re a nation of only 5 million people”. Tomorrow, our homeless figures will be compared to whole nations in order to make leo and our govs performance less bad.
@Adrian: disagree totally as a ordinary person he is doing a fantastic job for the ordinary tax payer.
Can’t understand this journalistic obsession with the opinions of celebrities. Well I can actually, celebrities sell print, print sales increase advertising, advertising revenue increases journalistic wages. An exercise in mutually beneficial back scratching.
The reality is Liam Neeson doesn’t live, work or pay taxes in Ireland, his agent is too smart for that so let’s be honest here his opinion doesn’t amount to a hill of beans.
I doubt if any homeless single mothers with children or elderly citizen trying to maintain dignity while lying on a hospital trolley for days would agree with Liam regards Leo ‘Thatcher’ Varadkar.
But there again if you really think about it Liam doesn’t actually care about their opinions either.
Coz Liam’s an expat celebrity living in the US…far far removed from their struggles.
@FrankDapavia: the thatcher thing ain’t sticking, no matter how the looney left try to make it.
@FrankDapavia: Homeless single mothers should be more copped on and stop being such idiots.
The danger is Leo is good at Phibbing
Fantastic actor, appears to be empathetic, and genuine on set, can play a variety of roles. Neeson isn’t a patch on him.
65????? That’s good Oil of Ulay!
Getting a job has nearer been easier for the genuine unemployed. We are heading for 5.5% unemployment rate. Well done to the Government for creating s good business environment. The trick now is to convince the remainder 5.5% that unemployment is becoming an unrealistic option. Those who are affected by disability must get proper assistance to be considered for employment based on their limited ability to work rather than their pretence that they deserve a life long disability allowance.
Now i get brexit a worry for the middle classes.
How many of these beefcake thrillers can neeson bang out?
@Noel James Doherty: Stallone is older and he’s still banging out The Expendables… Anyway I think LN just does them to keep busy and his mind off things.. I do wish he’d get stuck into meatier roles though.. he’s a decent actor..
@Noel James Doherty: he has some interesting films en route including Steve McQueens new film
Taken 4: Takin’ the Piss…
@Talleyrand Frye: who got taken this time, the dog? I’m just super jealous anyways, 65 and look at him I reckon he would be genuinely a tough nut
I’m a 100% will h Mr O’ Riordan, it’s just bananas the entire cat and caboodle!….
@Kate Flaherty: kit and caboodle??, cat and caboodle??
Very poor article, the journalist spent more time talking about Liam Neeson than talking to him…..zzzzzzz
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