Big Brother Wants You To Smile… Why Don’t You?
I was reading a Twitter thread the other day. In it, the guy – who I can’t find now, but will update if/when I do – was saying that he’d researched the Twitter algorithm and found a bunch of weighting factors for whether your tweets get displayed or not.
That shouldn’t be news to anyone; since all the social media platforms have moved away from chronological timing, it’s obvious that they use various ranking factors for different content.
What was interesting was that there was linguistic sentiment analysis that applied to the language used and the subjects used. Again, it’s one of those things that you might not consciously think about, but it makes perfect sense once you’re made aware of it.
As examples for the above; negative language might be “this sucks” and negative subjects might be the obvious things like self-harm or violence threatening things, but all the way through down to political discussions or expressing anger at one of those movie remakes that gets people frothing at the mouth and inevitably flops.
Obviously, there’s a pressing dilemma that comes with the implications of this: it’s soft-censorship in a 1984 way. There’s also a solution: stop being negative.
Let’s think about that.
The LEGO Movie And Big Brother
In the LEGO movie, (and bear in mind I haven’t watched it in years,) there’s a double-entendre, thematically.
It’s like Big Brother with LEGO bricks; but let me engage in literary heresy by saying that it’s better than 1984. 1984 casts its villains as villains; there’s no redemptive quality and it’s all a bit two-dimensional. You never get the sense that Big Brother is the good guy; but for a society-wide illusion to work, that has to be the case. The weight of everything being as it should be is far more effective a tool than fear is when it comes to controlling masses of people. The Big Brother state of 1984 is more North Korea than Utopia with a dark side, which is what the LEGO movie does successfully.
LEGO’s Big Brother holds society together in a dystopian normalcy because it’s what everyone thinks it should be. This makes the Bad Guy sympathetic, the world sympathetic, and importantly, it gets across the meaning of the film perfectly; everything is possible, everything is awesome, and you can be whatever you want to be, even if that’s being a normal, regular guy.
Brilliant satire.
I don’t bring that all up to let my Ebert out; it’s important to note that when people talk about the Deep State or whatever the buzz-term is, (and we’re walking into election season across the globe so you know it’s coming,) you don’t fall for the utter Good vs. Evil infantilisation that so many do. While it’s easy to think that the People You Don’t Like™ are actual demons feeding off the concentrated adrenaline of terrified children, it’s harder and thus better for you to realise that the various archons in charge of these things think they’re doing the right thing.
That brings us to social media algorithms.
The Algorithm Wants Everything To Be Awesome
You can see the flaws in the logic of having a sentiment analysis algorithm on social media.
It ultimately leads to LEGO Dystopia; negative speech isn’t allowed, everything is awesome! Don’t talk about politics, anger and bad things, talk about happy things!
However… you should also be able to see the reason why it occurs; not only is endless negativity and emotionally charged discussion bad for business, (somewhat ironically, good for clicks,) but it’s bad for the socialisation that social media sites seek to mimic.
Blanket rules cause blanket problems; there’s no place for joking around, griping like old men are wont to do, or being passive aggressive like us British folks are prone to doing.
However, limitations are the backbone of better work. So take it as a challenge, work on your satirical writing skills, and build your own platform in order to engage in truth telling.