We Need More Negativity in Our Lives
We’re being coddled.
Not by our loving partners, parents, family, and friends, though. At least, not for the purposes of this essay.
I’m talking about people who are loved and hated on a massive scale having unregulated control over our collective feelings through their massive social platforms.
And in this week’s piece, I’m referring to one tiny function that lies way way down the scale in importance, at least in most of these business magnate mindsets.
But as little as they might care about it, I’m of the belief that it is vastly more important to our collective psyche than they give it credit. And why they need to bring it back.
As ridiculous as it may sound, I’m talking about the simple ‘downvote’ button.
A dislike.
A thumbs down.
An equal and opposing reaction to the heart button on Twitter or Insta, the Liked function on Facebook, and the Up arrow seen across Reddit.
The simple action of being allowed to express your negativity—without taking time trying to figure out what appropriate words would express your level of displeasure.
A button to allow you to feel something.
***Note: This is an abbreviated version of the article, here’s a non-paywall link to the full version. Please remember to clap/comment if you enjoyed it or don’t hate me, thanks!***
Why the Hate?
The web monitoring company Mention looked at 11 billion different posts on the internet from 2013 to 2017. Their mission? To see if the internet actually is “an endless stream of stress” as the BBC once put it.
In 2013, their data showed overall comments skewed positive around 13% and negative around 2.7% of the time. Only 4 years later in 2017 — the last year in the analysis — those two numbers were 5.6% and 6.9% respectively.
Happiness had halved and negativity had doubled. The internet is making us unhappy.
Internet activist Eli Pariser predicted this would happen to the world wide web almost a decade ago. He coined the term as the internet’s giant filter-bubble.
Techopedia defines a filter-bubble as:
“The intellectual isolation that can occur when websites make use of algorithms to selectively assume the information a user would want to see and then give information to the user according to this assumption.”
When people engage in discourse, they jump to Google to search for something that proves their point. And with almost 3 million articles and blog posts being written every day — the article they want to find to support their argument — no matter how ridiculous — will exist.
Facebook caters our newsfeeds based on what we’ve liked in the past.
Groups allow like-minded individuals to share like-minded thoughts. Step outside of the norms of the group and find yourself outside of the group entirely shortly after.
Readers of Fox News aren’t likely to be avid readers of CNN and vice versa. Just the act of reading one source repeatedly almost ensures that the same source and type of content will pop up on your newsfeed more and more often — regardless of platform.
We are living in a filter-bubble and it’s likely to continue for the foreseeable future.
Give Me Back My Downvotes
The complexity and morality of allowing giant social media corporations to have such a large almost unquantifiable influence over our societal discourse is not a simple problem to solve.
Clearly.
But there are a few easy answers, at least in my mind. One of them is probably one of the simplest to implement — and one that I probably miss the most.
The humble dislike button.
Many social media platforms today no longer have one. Whether it's a downvote, a thumbs down, or a middle finger-shaped emoji — many people no longer have the option of clicking it.
Reddit moderators who run subreddits are given the choice to allow the function. When it’s enabled, it’s used as a filter to sort out divisive posts from the rest but also leads to problems like abuse based on opinions and introducing a feeling of negativity into the communities.
When disabled, many users felt it was “not in the spirit of Reddit” or pandered to those seeking “safe spaces” instead of open discourse. It also leaves many feeling like they are in a bubble of positivity.
And that’s the biggest problem I see — the absence of feelings.
Why Downvote?
I’m not trying to imply that building in a simple downvote button is the solution to the internet’s problem of driving divisiveness.
I just think it is one tool, that when managed properly, could go a long way to help. Not because disliking something doesn’t add an air of negativity.
The exact opposite.
The internet runs on 1’s and 0’s at the end of the day. We don’t. And having a simple upvote and downvote button isn’t anywhere near the complete answer.
But at least it allows people to express the negative side of things. In the absence of negativity, we users are only able to express ourselves given the available functions that remain.
Most of which skew positive.
On Facebook, for example, we are left between choosing one of the following, uhh, whatever the hell they’re called:
Or, you can comment.
And when you are restricted from voicing your displeasure with a simple downvote, the chances you comment — negatively — are increased. No wonder we’ve seen a huge increase in the vitriol of social media over the past decade.
It’s the only way left to express ourselves when feeling negative.
Ashton Kutcher, the former goofy actor-turned-tech investor with immense success, seems to agree.
“If we just gave people a very simple, frictionless way to say, ‘I disagree with this,’ you would probably reduce a massive amount of the sort of negative swaller that exists inside of social media.” — Ashton Kutcher
It’s Not a Cure
It’s just a tiny step to keeping the internet tied closer to reality. For sure, it can be abused in a multitude of ways — bots, groupthink, and politics are just a few examples.
But it also leaves us with another option for expression. An expression of the reality that we don’t like everything we see. The expression to feed into an anonymous algorithm that we don’t just not like something — that we actually dislike it.
It’s a reminder that the world is, at the very least, black and white. Not some puritan nirvana where everything is lovely and picturesque.
And yes, in some ways this can contribute to the filter-bubble problem. But in a different way — and in my view — a way that can be managed much easier than the absence of it.
Otherwise, we might end up in an even more extreme version of the filter-bubble. One that industry analyst Susan Etlinger calls the Potemkin internet — the concept that everything around us is completely manufactured and fake.
“The worst outcome is that we end up with a kind of Potemkin internet in which everything looks reasonably bright and sunny, which hides a more troubling and less transparent reality.” — Susan Etlinger
Takeaway
When there isn’t an option to express a 0, to express a strong dislike for something, we are only left with the 1. Or inaction itself.
I prefer being able to tell a computer that I disliked what I just read. Today, computers can only guess that I don’t, as advanced of a program they are.
On most platforms today, an algorithm can only make an assumption that I — because I spent time reading an opposing view, a political opinion I disagree with, or just a plain nasty joke — might have actually enjoyed it, or at least not hated it. Because that option doesn’t exist in its world.
The option of disliking something.
It can only judge my likes based on its inputs. And my inputs on these platforms are read-time, comments, or using a silly childlike emoji to express my complex feelings.
The lack thereof leaves bubbles to be formed and hateful comments to be made. When you put baby in the corner, it’s going to dance, despite your best intentions.
So, please give me back my downvote button. The world is full of nuance — even if it is just a 1 or a 0. It’s not made of pure positivity.
These media platform managers need to stop pretending reality is so damn peachy — they’re half the reason it’s not in the first place.
And if they’re going to ruin our society anyway, they could at least pay us the respect of letting us downvote it while it’s happening.
J.J. Pryor