I find the culture wars exhausting. While I care about a lot of the underlying issues being discussed — racism, sexism — the stories that seem to end up being discussed are always slightly annoying. “Why are we talking about this case and not something more representative?” I always think to myself.
There are certain ideas and models that help explain mysteries like this, and one model that has been really helpful to me, especially with emotionally fraught culture war stories, comes from the writer Scott Alexander (a consistent source of helpful ideas on the news). In this film, I break down this idea and show how it helps explain what’s going on. It has honestly changed how I understand these conflicts.
The film covers Black Lives Matter, Bill O’Reilly, a microbe that hypnotizes rats and a mysterious shark video.
I hope you have a chance to give it a watch!
What follows is an essay treatment of the film above. The project was designed as a film so it’s best watched that way, but if text is what you prefer:
Here’s a puzzle.
Why is it that when we hear about an issue like racism in the news so many of the stories being discussed are so… well, kind of frustrating.
We have stories about whether wearing a Chinese dress to a prom is an example of cultural appropriation, H&M selling a jumper that says “coolest monkey in the jungle”, or Heineken showing an ad that says “sometimes lighter is better”.
Really? We’re discussing this?
I’m not saying racism isn’t important. But we’re not talking about racism in employment (for example, people with White sounding names getting 50 per cent more callbacks for interviews) or in the criminal justice system (Black men getting 20 per cent longer sentences for the same crimes than White men). We’re arguing over prom dresses.
If you’re someone concerned about progress on these issues, this is frustrating.
Another example might be the issue of sexual assault.
Often the cases we seem to focus on are those that turn out to be false allegations (The Rolling Stone story about the University of Virginia) or the hard-to-prove edge cases (the accusations against Brett Kavanaugh) but the reality of rape in the courts is that a large number are straightforward cases: guilty pleas, no court battles. (The best data I could find was from the UK where 31 per cent of cases end in a guilty plea).
Again and again, it feels like we have a gap between the reality of the issue and the conversation on the news and social media. Why is this?
Normally this gap is explained as the result of a hostile conservative media making up stories that are unrepresentative or progressive activists being extreme. But I don’t think this does a good job of explaining these stories. You can find crazy activist ideas or distortions in the Daily Mail any day you like, but why do some particular stories reach prom dress-levels of attention?
This essay is about an idea that I believe explains a lot of what’s going on here and which since I found out about, has completely changed how I understand the news.
And it all starts with this shark.
This shark appeared in a video from 2014. It features a man jumping off a cliff in Sydney harbour and encountering the shark before swimming to safety. It’s a little dramatic masterpiece and as you might expect, the video went viral. But there was a problem: many people were saying it was a fake, pointing out what appeared to be hidden edits or inconsistencies.
Finally, two years later a Melbourne production company admitted to faking the video. But what was strange was that the flaws in the video — the mistakes people had spotted as proof it was fake — hadn’t stopped it from being successful.
In fact, the flaws had helped, as the arguments they provoked generated hundreds of algorithm-friendly comments and shares on social media. As the article interviewing the filmmakers described it: “the more people argued over the authenticity of a video, the more viral the video became.”
The company went on to turn this accidental discovery into a strategy, purposely making a whole series of videos that were just fake enough to generate back-and-forth comment wars and thus become viral.
The same year all this was happening, the writer Scott Alexander talked about this back and forth dynamic in his essay, “Toxoplasma of Rage” in which he compared how internet stories go viral with the gross, but kind of amazing, parasite, toxoplasma.
The way this parasite works is that it starts off living in a cat. The cat then poops it out until it ends up, via the water supply, in a rat. Once in the rat, the toxoplasma hijacks its brain, convincing it to hang out conspicuously in areas where cats can eat it. The parasite is then back in the cat who then poops it out leading a rat to consume it, and so the cycle repeats.
Alexander argued comment wars on the internet work in the same way, with one side saying something which in turn provokes the opposition, whose response then provokes the first side to respond to them, and so on. This “Toxoplasma of Rage” can give stories a valuable boost, especially on an internet that rewards comments and shares.
But the key point about all this is that for stories to gain this boost they need to be somewhat difficult or flawed.
You can see this in the shark video example. If the fake had been more sophisticated, no one would have noticed and commented on it.
While too obvious a fake and everyone would have just been able to see that and there’s nothing to argue over.
To succeed the video had to be in a central point between the two sides: not ideal for either of them but giving them both enough to argue over. The controversy sweet spot you might call it.
And it’s this dynamic that pushes so many unrepresentative stories to the top of the national conversation. The stories that best represent an issue and that activists would most like everyone to pay attention to, don’t engage the opposition, meaning no Toxoplasma of Rage and no attention.
But the stories that are difficult or borderline give both sides something to argue over and, boosted by the Toxoplasma of Rage, they rise to the top of the conversation.
As an example of this phenomena, Scott Alexander looks at two police killings from the year 2014, and asks why the death of Eric Garner, killed after being put in a chokehold, received less attention — at least at first — than that of Michael Brown, who was also killed by police the same year.
This was odd because it Garner’s death was shocking. In fact, even a conservative like Bill O’Reilly, who would normally defend the police, felt the need to condemn it.
But the perverse consequence of the fact it was so clearly wrong was that it provoked less controversy, no Toxoplasma of Rage and thus less attention.
On the other hand, the death of Michael Brown was surrounded by — whether it should have been or not — a lot more controversy.
For activists hoping to win over the public on the issue of police brutality, it seems the better case to focus on is Eric Garner’s, the case even conservatives felt the need to condemn.
Likewise, conservatives would have, no doubt, preferred to focus on a story about a police officer being killed in the line of duty. Yet these stories only get one side posting, commenting and sharing.
The less straightforward, more difficult case of Michael Brown, however, hooked both sides into arguing over it, thus a Toxoplasma of Rage and national attention.
Of course the Toxoplasma of Rage isn’t the only dynamic that can gain attention for a story. The murder of George Floyd in 2020 got lots of attention, demonstrating the power of shocking video. And the MeToo movement was ignited by the Harvey Weinstein revelations, the story helped by the fact that so many of those involved were well known.
But while both Black Lives Matter and MeToo started off focusing on stories that inspired wide political support, the way our attention economy is structured meant both issues were sucked towards the Controversy Sweet Spot, leaving us debating the merits of Defund the Police or the more borderline, if still important, cases of wrongdoing like that of Aziz Ansari.
I think this dynamic explains a lot about what’s going on with so many culture war stories but what’s so exasperating is that it undermines the efforts of movements like those against racism or sexual assault to actually achieve change.
Sure people are talking about the issue but what they’re being exposed to are the Controversy Sweet Spot stories which are exactly those stories it’s hardest to build a consensus around. After all, it’s the divisiveness of these stories that has pushed them to the top of the agenda.
And anytime we do find something we can all agree on the story is sucked towards that Controversy Sweet Spot where we all start arguing again.
See also:
- Sort by Controversial — Scott Alexander
Thank you for reading.
It’s worth saying that this isn’t a straightforward video treatment of Scott’s essay and the original is worth reading in its own right. Scott’s essay got me thinking deeply about how culture war stories work, and I feel like I ended up coming up with something that is a remix (or distortion) of his ideas. I guess what I’m trying to say is that any good bits in what’s above should be credited to him, but if you want the most accurate understanding of his ideas the best thing to read is the original essay.