Oh, companies know. Social media have definitive data that show most users engage on anger. That’s why it’s in their core interest to promote rage baits and disinformation. More engagements means more traffic. More traffic means more advertisers. More advertisers means more revenues.
I think you might be misunderstanding my point here. Rage bait, and hate are separate to the idea of toxic positivity, which is a separate concept companies also use and abuse, and which is the subject of my comment.
Hell, even before social media, news tends to report more on negative news than positive ones. Because bad news is tantamount to hearing gossips, and we all love gossips. I know many of us will say bad news makes us sad, and yet we still tune in to any news.
I actually disagree with this one fundamentally.
Good news just isn’t as important as bad news on average.
Good news is typically long term, progressive and rarely has singular big moments. “X number of people moved out of poverty through the effects of economic policies started XX years ago” isn’t something that it makes sense to give time over “flash flooding hits current location”.
More than that, the news cycle is ill equipped to go into detail for more nuanced stories, and it would be rife with organizations like the world economic forum cooking stats to present much more peachy societal outcomes under policies they favour vs more objective or neutral viewpoints.
Kind of on a tangent, I notice this as well that some people seem more predisposed to negative thinking. I think it’s just hardwired into them. Although, I have to say, in my field of work, negative thinkers tend to have good attention to detail.
Quite frankly, I hate absolutely everything about the sentiment of this snippet. The idea that negativity is bad inherently is, I well, looking at my previous comment, I think I’ve already expressed that point.
Negative points are goals to hit. Positive ones are literally just less important. They’re check offs on your todo list. Important perhaps for internal motivation, but not so when communicating news, events, research (mostly) etc.
It is a good trait to a limited degree, but it could impair relationships both at work and outside, if one is too suspicious and distrustful of everyone.
I would say this doesn’t seem wholly unreasonable.
I think you might be misunderstanding my point here. Rage bait, and hate are separate to the idea of toxic positivity, which is a separate concept companies also use and abuse, and which is the subject of my comment.
I actually disagree with this one fundamentally.
Good news just isn’t as important as bad news on average.
Good news is typically long term, progressive and rarely has singular big moments. “X number of people moved out of poverty through the effects of economic policies started XX years ago” isn’t something that it makes sense to give time over “flash flooding hits current location”.
More than that, the news cycle is ill equipped to go into detail for more nuanced stories, and it would be rife with organizations like the world economic forum cooking stats to present much more peachy societal outcomes under policies they favour vs more objective or neutral viewpoints.
Quite frankly, I hate absolutely everything about the sentiment of this snippet. The idea that negativity is bad inherently is, I well, looking at my previous comment, I think I’ve already expressed that point.
Negative points are goals to hit. Positive ones are literally just less important. They’re check offs on your todo list. Important perhaps for internal motivation, but not so when communicating news, events, research (mostly) etc.
I would say this doesn’t seem wholly unreasonable.