like either a dumbass posting stupid shit, unfair bans, idiotic arguments, etc etc. i feel so incredibly stupid letting it affect me at all, but then also there’s real feelings mixed in there because it’s a real argument i give a shit about to some degree. so it’s this odd double crossing where i know it’s stupid but i process it as being real.
bonus points for not answering ‘go outside drink water read a book’ etc etc
It doesn’t happen often, but I do this for people in my life occasionally as well with online. I type out a whole response that I would want to say. Then I delete it without sharing it. It is often enough for me to realize it just doesn’t matter and it is better to move on.
Reddit taught me this. It’s great to cope with frustration while not engaging in a sterile argument.
This, along with keeping in perspective that troll farms exist and operate on social media because more interactions mean more usage, and more usage means more value to the platform because these numbers prove people are using it. So the trolls causing friction make the platform owners richer, the trolls try to go viral on bad takes (for clout or other direct financial gain by ‘influencing’), and this is how and why there seems to be so many people seeming to be ‘extreme’ (while some certainly are, others are emboldened and just follow their lead when it seems that there’s no negative consequence). End of the day, if someone’s trying to get your goat, don’t let them buy it with bullshit.
Is there an expose I can read about farms that are intended to boost platform profits?
I’m not necessarily saying that all of the farms are owned/run by the respective social media platforms, though here is an article that touches a bit of what I’m trying to say. Another instance that I can think of was [reddit tried an astroturf campaign to try and make folks less critical of the API changes reddit tried an astroturf campaign to try and make folks less critical about the API changes
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