A good while back, someone on this forum posted a link to a video on youtube that talked about how certain ideas were more likely to be spread and shared by people due to the emotions they evoked in the viewer.

The video talked about how things that people agreed with or just made them feel kind of good didn't get much traction, but something that made people's blood boil with rage was much more likely to get shared. I remember a ranking of emotions based on the likelihood of a person's interaction.

Does anyone know what I'm talking about? I want to find that video again to share with a friend. I tried searching the forum for it but don't remember any of the keywords or even roughly when it was posted :/

A good while back, someone on this forum posted a link to a video on youtube that talked about how certain ideas were more likely to be spread and shared by people due to the emotions they evoked in the viewer.

The video talked about how things that people agreed with or just made them feel kind of good didn't get much traction, but something that made people's blood boil with rage was much more likely to get shared. I remember a ranking of emotions based on the likelihood of a person's interaction.

Does anyone know what I'm talking about? I want to find that video again to share with a friend. I tried searching the forum for it but don't remember any of the keywords or even roughly when it was posted :/

It was an episode of Extra Credits... but I can't remember more than that about it. :(

Their youtube channel is here, though:

https://www.youtube.com/user/ExtraCreditz

Unfortunately, there are over 200 eps. :(

Great, that gets me way closer. Thanks Claude!

Actually it wasn't Extra Creditz, although it was similar format:

This video will make you angry

Sorry i misled. :(

Actually it wasn't Extra Creditz, although it was similar format:

This video will make you angry

Another option to avoid anger germs: quit social media.

Another option to avoid anger germs: quit social media.

If not, it certainly carries thought germs in the same way. There's no share button, but our brains are good vectors. I don't think social media is the problem. There is no simple solution unless you argue that we should cut ourselves off from social human contact.

I read that title and I figured "Vsauce or CGPGrey."

It was CGPGrey. Those two guys irritate me because they don't appear to do more than cursory research on their videos, and when one puts one out, you encounter the attitude among people and have to go through and talk about why it's overblown. Not as bad as all those guys who only read history through The Oatmeal who think Tesla was the second coming of Christ and Edison crucified him, but annoying.

we should cut ourselves off from social human contact.

That's the dream.

For some reason, I was pretty sure it was Extra Credits, too.

-Disciple

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when one puts one out, you encounter the attitude among people and have to go through and talk about why it's overblown.

You mean you have to tell people why they're wrong when they watch a youtube video and then think they're experts? Life is hard sometimes :)

In this case, I didn't need or want a super deep analysis. A friend on facebook was complaining that people never liked his positive stuff and only liked the negative stuff, and it made me think of that video.

That's probably the only CPGrey video I've ever seen.

The results indicate that content is more likely to become viral the more positive it is (Table 4, Model 1)....positive content is more viral than negative content.

The entire video is built on a particular finding by a study linked to in the youtube video. The above quote is from that study.

I would wager CGPGrey had a hypothesis going into this and used a particular element from the study while ignoring the study's conclusions. He also ignored a later study by the same authors replicating these findings, with a better design in a more prestigious publication. Perhaps it's because of the objects being studied, journal articles rather than NYT articles, but I'd bet it's because they don't show a graph with "anger."

The anger part of the study came from participants being asked to read a story about a negative customer service experience. All other aspects were controlled for, the difference was that one version of the article was designed to make the reader more angry. The more angry a person was, the more likely he was to share the story. This is consistent with their central hypothesis, that emotions invoked are positively correlated with sharing frequency. So, in other words, it's better to be positive than negative, but any emotion works. So angry gets people to share more than nothing or sadness, but that's all that can be determined by that study.

The study itself is an all right design, and is rigorous. CGPGrey just cherry picked data and heavily implied negativity gets shared more, even explicitly stating angry content gets shared more, when the studies showed the exact opposite.

I'll quote the authors again, in a review of their studies from last year.

This means that content that makes readers or viewers feel a positive emotion like awe or wonder is more likely to take off online than content that makes people feel sad or angry.

Do you think it's "good enough?" I sure don't.

http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/Delivery.cfm/SSRN_ID2013137_code502159.pdf?abstractid=1528077&mirid=1
http://www.pnas.org/content/111/Supplement_4/13642.full.pdf
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-secret-to-online-success-what-makes-content-go-viral/

Another option to avoid anger germs: quit social media.

If not, it certainly carries thought germs in the same way. There's no share button, but our brains are good vectors. I don't think social media is the problem. There is no simple solution unless you argue that we should cut ourselves off from social human contact.

Sure it's social media in some form, but it's not free-range social media. I'm not going to say that the latter is wholly bad or even mostly bad, but I do think there are negative consequences when it's used as a primary source of information. And it'd be foolish to say that the tools we use to communicate do not influence the way we communicate. (A letter I write with a fountain pen is always different than an e-mail I compose.) I'd take it further and say that the way we communicate through social media can and often does negatively affect how we communicate outside of social media (see Sherry Turkle).

Sure it's social media in some form, but it's not free-range social media. I'm not going to say that the latter is wholly bad or even mostly bad, but I do think there are negative consequences when it's used as a primary source of information. And it'd be foolish to say that the tools we use to communicate do not influence the way we communicate. (A letter I write with a fountain pen is always different than an e-mail I compose.) I'd take it further and say that the way we communicate through social media can and often does negatively affect how we communicate outside of social media (see Sherry Turkle).

Sure, the medium is the message and it forms our communication patterns. That being said, in relation to these thought germs- that has been going on throughout history. People form opinions of other groups and argue amongst themselves about how terrible that other group is. The lack of critical engagement with angering thoughts is not something unique to social media or our era in history. Humans are hard-wired towards tribalism and defining in/out group dynamics, which has its advantages and disadvantages.

I guess I don't think avoiding social media insulates us from that danger. Learning to identify the danger and subvert it is a valuable skill in any medium of communication.

I agree with you. It seems as if he misrepresented or misunderstood that information fairly severely.

Sure it's social media in some form, but it's not free-range social media. I'm not going to say that the latter is wholly bad or even mostly bad, but I do think there are negative consequences when it's used as a primary source of information. And it'd be foolish to say that the tools we use to communicate do not influence the way we communicate. (A letter I write with a fountain pen is always different than an e-mail I compose.) I'd take it further and say that the way we communicate through social media can and often does negatively affect how we communicate outside of social media (see Sherry Turkle).

Sure, the medium is the message and it forms our communication patterns. That being said, in relation to these thought germs- that has been going on throughout history. People form opinions of other groups and argue amongst themselves about how terrible that other group is. The lack of critical engagement with angering thoughts is not something unique to social media or our era in history. Humans are hard-wired towards tribalism and defining in/out group dynamics, which has its advantages and disadvantages.

Of course "thought germs" are not unique or new but social media is new as a means to spread them.

I guess I don't think avoiding social media insulates us from that danger. Learning to identify the danger and subvert it is a valuable skill in any medium of communication.

I didn't to imply it did--at least not completely. Using your brain is always good. I contend that social media is changing our brains and the way we communicate, and the change is not positive.

Of course "thought germs" are not unique or new but social media is new as a means to spread them.

True. The internet has vastly increased the reach and rate of spread of any particular idea.

I guess I don't think avoiding social media insulates us from that danger. Learning to identify the danger and subvert it is a valuable skill in any medium of communication.

I didn't to imply it did--at least not completely.

Another option to avoid anger germs: quit social media.

Using your brain is always good. I contend that social media is changing our brains and the way we communicate, and the change is not positive.

I totally agree that it is changing our brains. In many ways we lost a good deal of our capacity to remember when we transitioned from a society in which information is transmitted orally to one where text became the dominant form of saving knowledge (Gutenberg). On the other hand, it freed us to focus our minds on other things.

I'm pretty suspicious of social media myself, but I don't think we know enough to make a judgement about the net gains vs the net losses yet. I definitely notice the difference in how space is conceptualized for instance. It used to be that when you were alone in high school, you were really on your own. Interviews with teenagers suggest they conceptualize being together and supported by their peers across space. At the same time, the focus on those immediately in your presence has been diminished.

Sure we could talk about the depth of conversations available via social media, but that is true about any medium. For instance, I would much rather have a conversation with my wife in person than over the phone/over text. However, when I worked in an office, I couldn't do that. We did have gchat up though and I could share thoughts throughout the day. This gave me a sense of closeness not available otherwise. It isn't the same level of interaction as personal conversation, but it is good, like a phone call before bed when you're out of town.

By that same merit, social media is changing us. A lot of it is not so good, but there are definitely some positive virtues. I'm just not sure we have the perspective to ask the right questions to measure it in terms of net gain or net loss yet.

In any case, I'm onboard with your suspicion, but I'm not onboard with the proclamation that social media is hurting us more than previous methods of communication.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N5fXtThdR8I

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Even better; don't even start. (JYNX will back me on this one).