Fake positivity

[Ed]

Something I’ve noticed many times over the past few years is this high-pressure push to positivity spreading online. You’ll see it on YouTube where it displays a count of up-votes but doesn’t display down-votes. Many social media sites used to have thumbs-down buttons too, but those have mostly gone now. If you post anything remotely critical, you often get shouted down for being negative.

Now I’m seeing the same concept distorting the stats on Patreon. Currently my “Insights” page shows that this month there’s a total of 11 patrons and that’s an increase of 5 on last month. This sounds great BUT the stats also show that there were 11 patrons in September an increase of 13 in August (which clearly makes no sense!). The reason for this is, to stay positive, it’s just ignoring everyone who ended their support. In reality, the site has less supporters in October than September, but because of the refusal to acknowledge anything negative, the stats become gibberish.

If I look at the latest month’s stats and don’t record anything myself or look in too much detail, it gives the impression that things are improving and everything is rosy. The reality is October wasn’t as good as September and I’m more likely to have cause for concern.

RFLE58, John, Arthur and 2 more people like this

[Arthur]

As a person who mostly writes post apocalyptic dystopia and is very cynical I don’t feel the need for everything to be positivity all the time. I can kind of understand the concern on social media, though because a lot of people take it too seriously and it has a very negative effect on people’s self-esteem, some even get driven to suicide by it, so by giving people the ability to react negatively you could be having a very bad effect on whoever posted it. I mean I get it, but at the same time it sort of reminds me of that episode of South Park where they had Kyle having to go through all of Cartman’s social media post and only showing him the positive ones so that he wouldn’t feel bad. I think that people have a hard time being criticized in general and that causes them to be driven away if they are. I use social media but if you use it too much it can get pretty toxic.

Diana and Ed like this

[Ed]

I don’t think forced positivity on social media helps foster a positive environment. Personally, I find it depressing and dystopian.

It’s like when employers require their employees to smile all the time. It just looks fake and annoying.

Martin, Arthur and Diana like this

[Arthur]

@Ed

“I don’t think forced positivity on social media helps foster a positive environment. Personally, I find it depressing and dystopian.

It’s like when employers require their employees to smile all the time. It just looks fake and annoying.”

You know it actually reminds me I forgot about this story I wrote it actually was a dystopia based on that premise. It was in a world where women were encouraged to smile all the time and if they were caught frowning they would be given sort of like a fine or a tax because them frowning would make other people feel bad, but it ends with a bunch of women who feel bad because somebody they know died sort of rebelling against the tax and once a large number of people do it the authorities just run away.

[RFLE58]

Positive things simply have a better effect on people.

When counting the number of visitors to an account or the number of likes for a post, the data collected can only be read correctly if it can be put into context. For example, the number of visitors compared to the previous month or the number of readers and “likes”.

At least that’s how I try to interpret the statistics of my posts, no matter where.

Martin likes this

[Author]

Posts