Good morning, Hank, it's Tuesday. I loved your video last week about how,
especially in online discourse we often create dichotomies that place us into
one of two opposing camps. Like two innocent examples being
a hotdog is or is not a sandwich or cereal is or is not a soup.
One might call these questions instantly debatable and, of course,
they do extend beyond the hotdog and cereal realm.
But the thing about these instantly debatable questions is they tend to
avoid nuance and complexity, like there is a spectrum of foods
that involve some combination of processed wheat with meat,
and/or cheese and/or vegetables and within that spectrum,
there is another spectrum that we call sandwich
and both of those spectra have fuzzy edges because that's the
nature of spectra!
But that is a boring take that does not demand engagement.
Whereas a question like, "Is butt legs?" does demand engagement.
And engagement is sort of the fuel that runs the social internet.
Videos with higher engagement to view ratios on Youtube or TikTok are shown to
more people than videos with low engagement to view ratios.
The same is true, for example, on my Twitter, like here are a couple
of my recent Tweets.
This one I joke about the former
Prime Minister of the UK got 20k likes and generated over 100 new followers.
This one shares the news that Sierra Leone's Kissy Psychiatric Hospital
has just been accredited as a full teaching hospital
where, for the first time in Serra Leone's
history, physicians and nurses can get psychiatric training inside the country.
And it got about 5% as many likes as the Liz Truss one and generated
zero new followers.
Now, obviously, these are very different Tweets. One is a celebration, and the other is a joke.
One is about a news story everyone on Twitter knows about, the other isn't
But I see this everywhere I make stuff online.
When I make stuff that allows people to agree or disagree with it in a straightforward
dichotomous way, it gets a larger audience than when I don't do that.
And this is true even when I'm sharing something that almost everyone would be happy about.
Like, that the Sierra Leonean healthcare system is getting stronger.
The only real way I found to get a lot of engagement
around an issue that people basically agree about is to present it as
instantly debatable as in, this is obvious and the only reason it's not happening is
because systems or people are merely evil and corrupt.
The most notable example of this in my own life is probably my long-standing crusade
against the US penny.
And I can get some engagement out of the idea that the US penny only gets
minted because Congress mostly cares about divisive issues that can help
them get re-elected and not super obvious things like, not minting pennies.
However, that kinda thing is much easier
with small issues, like pennies, than it is with something big, like the multifactoral
injustice that has led to impoverished healthcare and education systems.
But, here's the thing, even though vlogbrothers videos about how stupid pennies are have
gotten lots of engagement and views, I would actually argue they have been
less effective at making change, pun intended,
than vlogbrothers videos that get far less views.
For instance, vlogbrothers videos about Kissy Psychiatric Hospital and, for me,
that's the real lesson. They way to get simple engagement:
likes, views, comments; is not necessarily the way to get actual engagement.
The kind of volunteering, and fundraising, and lobbying that helps bring about real change.
Of course, none of this is to delegitimize having fun on the internet and engaging
with instantly debatable questions And, I think even politically charged
instantly debatable questions can be hugely helpful in getting us angry.
Because we should be pissed off about injustice. And sometimes those instantly debatable
questions can be a way into a new or deeper understanding of it.
The year I graduated from high school,
11 million children under the age of 5 died. This year, fewer than 5 million will.
That is still way too high, but there was nothing inevitable about that progress.
It happened because people worked together to make it happen.
Activists, healthcare workers, governments, charities, all worked together to make that
progress, and it was messy, hard, complicated work.
But that is real engagement. Not stopping at mere despair.
Hank, I'll see you on Friday.