Everything Happens So Much

Cryptic spambot messages that speak to the soul, hidden TikTok confessions, emotional aggregation by way of viral videos, and myriad ways to get good at anger

If you are feeling angry or anxious, you aren’t alone. Anger is the theme of this week’s roundup of stories where emotion and tech intersect.

😫 Raging Because of the Machine

It seems like a new study about how social media fans the flame of anger emerges every day. You might argue that there’s no shortage of issues to feel angry about—from Supreme Court decisions to mass shootings to the war atrocities in Ukraine. A number of recent research reports, collected in The New York Times, show that divisive social media posts receive more likes, shares, and comments which increases the anger of individuals and contributes to the general rage-filled vibe. We might be right to lament how “we have shifted to dystopian anxiety about social media’s tendencies to fuel political polarization, reward extremism, encourage a culture of outrage and generally contribute to the degradation of civic discourse about politics.” But take heart! We’re developing coping strategies and finding ways to come together too. Read on…

🎥 Viral Video as a Coping Strategy

One way we process our outrage online is to create and share videos. Reychan Harmanci writes specifically about the Uvalde mass shooting in When Raw Emotions Go Viral. First, come the clips that intend to inform, filling in a timeline as it unfolds. Then the clips of the after-effects by survivors, parents, and bystanders, “followed by the heartbreaking photos and details of victims.” When current events prompt all these strong emotions, we can find it difficult to pull ourselves away from the fresh horrors. It turns out that even borderline obsessive viewing can help us to process our emotions, as a kind of “emotional aggregation”. But videos aren’t just an expression of rage and sorrow, videos can encourage support for stronger gun laws and prompt political action. So the next time you find yourself spending hours seeking out and sharing videos, try not to feel ashamed. Viral video can fulfill a real emotional need after mass trauma.

🐴 Humor as Online Emotional Regulation

Humor is another way we cope with the too-muchness of *gestures broadly at everything* all this. In The Atlantic, Kaitlin Tiffany writes about an oblique yet somehow comforting utterance that resurfaces in the worst of times—the viral post by the now @Horse_ebooks Twitter account. Over the past decade, “everything happens so much” has become a cultural touchstone: “The reposts of the tweet provide, in combination, provide a cryptic catalog of recent history’s most dizzying events.” People continue to rally around the phrase when the news feels overwhelming.  

Not all memes survive as forever moods but there are plenty of “memes as coping strategy” to consider. The “we will adopt your baby” meme is the most recent example. In the wake of the latest Supreme Court decision striking down Roe v. Wade, creepy pictures of disingenuous pro-life couples holding signs saying “we will adopt your baby” were countered with alternatives like Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton sprawling drunkenly on the sofa in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf, Ivanka and Jared ominously peering out the window of Buckingham Palace, the McCloskey’s with guns raised at Black Lives Matter protesters, and (my favorite) H.I. and Ed in Raising Arizona.

alexis @alexisquasar

we will adopt your baby

💄 Product Requests as Safe Havens

Leave it to Tiktok to come up with the most original way to create a safe space for emotion by bookending intimate fears between product Q and As. Spotted in over 200,000 videos, a commonly asked question about beauty products or skincare routines precedes a confession about an insecurity. For instance, creator Azucena Villalba posted "What's everyone's go to hairstyle for the gym? I'm 25 never been in a relationship or been romantically pursued. I'm starting to believe that I wasn't meant to find love in this life. Personally, I like doing 2 quick braids." Like so much of our approach to expressing emotion on the internet, vulnerability is tempered with a dash of irony or humor. The trend also mimics the way we process information online where “we're consistently inundated with a flurry of unrelated topics on our feeds, from mindless consumerism to breaking news to users' own existentialism.” The jarring juxtaposition of emotions in our feeds is subverted.

🙀 Other Ways to Stop F-R-E-A-K-I-N-G Out

What if we want to go a little deeper and really understand our anger? According to Arthur Brooks, start by not freaking out. Otherwise known as emotional flooding, freaking out is that automatic and disorganized response to a perceived threat, bad news, or a negative reaction by someone close. Giving yourself a minute to interpret what you are feeling might sound easy but it requires what social scientists call metacognition. The idea is that if you can become aware of your emotions, you can act less impulsively.

Catherine Pearson comes up with several ideas on How to Raise Kids Who Are Good at Getting Angry that are highly relevant for adults too. A few helpful strategies:

• Build an emotional vocab; learn more words that can help you articulate what you’re feeling

• Name your own anger; pause and identify what you’re feeling

• Develop coping strategies; find what helps you understand your emotions (see above!)

• Set boundaries, know that all emotions are okay but not all behaviors are okay

Sounds advice for any age! And we can go even further and put our anger to good use as executive coach Yvette Costa notes in Forbes. In keeping with that adage, “anger doesn’t need somewhere to go, it needs something to do”, she suggests finding ways to channel that outrage into positive change and constructive dialogue.

A worthy goal: don’t feel guilty about coping with social media camaraderie and do use that energy for action!

(╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻ That’s all the feels for this week!

xoxo

Pamela 💗