> the most viral and captivating content is often content that purposefully instills anger, fear, outgroup-hatred, schadenfreude, etc Another aspect is that on

> the most viral and captivating content is often content that purposefully instills anger, fear, outgroup-hatred, schadenfreude, etc Another aspect is that on social media, virality isn't just based on people actively sharing stuff, but also content being so captivating that the platform amplifies it into virality based on user interaction statistics. (E.g. high click-through rates being used as a feedback signal to show content to more people, thus amplifying clickbait.) I experienced that first-hand with a YouTube channel I started recently: one day I noticed the impression count (i.e. the number of times YouTube showed a video thumbnail to someone) growing exponentially. But view counts didn't grow nearly as much. So my content didn't suddenly get more popular, it had just randomly gotten a boost in the recommendation algorithm, showing it to many more people, most of whom weren't interested. (The boost subsequently disappeared.) I think if social media were just people talking to each other, we'd be mostly fine. But imagine how little time you'd spend e.g. on YouTube if the only way to watch a video were to have someone send you the link. Obviously not enough for the platform. So the search for virality turns into a self-fulfilling prophecy: if the recommendation algorithm thinks something will go viral, it can make it happen simply by pushing it in front of enough eyeballs.