on engagement bait and real internet
Bait is everywhere – rage, engagement, or otherwise. I've historically spent the most time on Twitter, but you see it all over.
The lowest level is pure engagement bait. Tweeting "What's the best opening line in any song?" and watching the people react. You are a conduit for opinions and responses. Eric Alper, at one point, was the gold standard for pure engagement bait, but anybody can do it. You're not offering your opinion (at least in the initial post), but you open the door. Sports have these types of accounts. Movies, TV, books, architecture, whatever you want. There's probably an aggregator asking questions. Everybody used to kinda hate Eric Alper, but his mode of engagement bait was pretty pure. I'd say even Gary Suarez's Music Writer Exercise was Pure Engagement Bait. Those accounts benefit from people building off them through following and name recognition, but it's not really about them.
Level 2 is people who are intentionally phrasing their own genuine thoughts in ways that will get the max amount of reaction. The funniest (and, typically, least harmful) version of it wants to maintains a real plausible deniability. People with large followings who phrase things in ways that are designed to evoke a response more due to that phrasing than content of post. The content could be pretty innocuous if it was just phrased slightly different. I've been online long enough and have enough reach to know when I'm phrasing something provocatively, so it's a bit silly when I see people respond to their own provocative posts with, "Uhh so everybody's being SUPER normal about this omg!!" or something to that effect. It's a feigned ignorance that will get them defended by their friends. I'd argue most of the time they fully knew they'd get exactly that kind of engagement off their inflammatorily phrased, but basically reasonable, thought. It strikes me as mostly just corny to have that big fake reaction about how you can't believe it. At the end of the day, though, a lot of people I like and respect do this. It's an easy way to build a following, I should know.
There is a flip side of people who don't believe the stuff I believe who are doing the same thing. I tend to believe they're grifting a little more, but I think they believe it. Women who are recommending living your life by your menstrual cycle, soft lift influencers, techno-optimists that I'd call fascists... that kind of stuff.
Rage-bait is different, of course. Where the people I describe above tend to genuinely believe the things they're saying, people who engage in rage-bait are enigmas. Their north star is engagement that's pretending to do the second example. Maybe they believe it, maybe they don't, maybe it's somewhere in between. I don't think that really matters because the idea of pure human intellectual belief has nothing to do with the impact or the point. "Triggering the libs" is rage-bait, for example. It doesn't matter if someone genuinely, in their heart of hearts, believes any of that bullshit when they spout it. Men saying women and men have biological roles. Saying something dismissive about hockey in the south to provoke Carolina Hurricanes fans into biting your head off. Whatever it may be.
There is a lot of "you have to stop paying it any attention" but the point of the internet tends to be commenting on other people's thoughts, so I struggle with that as solution. Recently a person with about 7x the following I have on twitter apologized to me for quote tweeting me and intruding on my digital space. I told her it's fine. I delete almost all my tweets that reach past 200 likes anyway. I don't want to deal with it and it's my responsibility to know that. I have agency. I have to believe I have agency over my internet experience. It's not her responsibility to protect my online experience.
I've been thinking about the recent Vulture article about the internet being all advertising and, more so, the response that is focused on the idea that the internet is dead and you can't reasonably be angry about marketing or advertising when you engage with the internet. I really struggle with the dismissive attitude so many culture journalists take on regarding digital marketing and pervasive advertising. To me, there is being realistic about how much you're advertised to and an expectation of total resignation to endless advertising. There is almost a submission to internet marketing that I find depressing. It's more depressing when it's projected onto younger people that feel an innate rejection of covert marketing.
You should feel betrayed by the thousands of fake fan accounts.
You should hate them.
It should impact your relationship to the art.
For a long time, there has been an attitude online where it is sort of progressive to defer to whatever will be the most profitable for individuals you may be a fan of. It's true of YouTubers looking to regain profits in the wake of the so-called Adpocalypse. It's true of musicians as they suffer under the streaming model. My impulse is to side with individuals trying to make a living off their work. Of course.
But when it comes to artists who find a level of success that allows for the hiring of promotional agencies, it's tough to decide I suddenly don't object to covert marketing and concealed advertising that I fundamentally view as unethical, if not fully in violation of the FTC. I don't like it. I can't look away from that just because I like the artist. It's not naivety and it's not rooting against artists. I just think you have to give a fuck about that stuff or what's the point?
I care about the internet and the internet is reaching people, whether you want to believe it or not. The clips of Clavicular and other Looksmaxxing dudes that Vulture article is talking about have been reaching people for years. I struggle to believe anybody writing about them now views them as more than freakshows. Feign concern for the youth all you want, I think the interest is more akin to Hot People For Trump profiles than something interested in the more complex world of internet misogyny. I watched YouTube videos of guys looking at the ratings Looksmaxxers gave them and their friends years ago. It's white supremicist ideology, it's dumb guy phrenology, it feeds into misogyny through a specific kind of toxic masculinity. I knew that years ago. It's part of a greater culture that is infecting young men in ways that pure views on streams doesn't quite capture. Everybody leading any kind of mainstream conversation around Clavicular's broader world today feels so ill-equipped to discuss it because I think they view the internet as so fake that it's not reaching anybody. They are not the people being reached, but they view themselves as Internet Natives, so they're in limbo. There are so many people reporting on the internet who don't actually know anything about active internet culture.
The thing is that young people are being impacted by the general attitude online. Whether that's looksmaxxing on any level, an obsession with being thinner, attitudes against sex, whatever – something is reaching them. Much like rage-bait, I don't think it matters where that messaging comes from. It's reaching people. I think it's good to push against it, even if it's bots, because people are seeing it. And that's hard to reconcile. They're not leaving the internet, just like you haven't. If it doesn't feel like the people getting mad at you online are fake people, then you have to believe they aren't.
You can say the internet is dead, but you're seeing it, aren't you?
Lately I've been listening to the following things:
Learning How by Bellows
Bellows
I love Bellows. This is a new one from him. Stripped down and beautiful. Learning how to cry, indeed.
Wendy Eisenberg
Piroktecnia
Wendy Eisenberg is an artist I felt a draw to despite it being the kind of thing I might bristle against. By that I mean a Pitchfork best new music designation with all the linguistic markings of genius. Maybe it's for me to unpack why I bristle against designations of genius, but I do really like this album. The strings are beautiful, their voice contrasts with the beauty just enough to make it work, to make it sharp. Wonderful record.
Black Boys on Mopeds by Fontaines D.C.
I'm really fond of this Fontaines D.C. cover of "Black Boys on Mopeds" by Sinead O'Conner from the War Child Records compilation. It's a beautiful, heartbreaking song always, but I think they do something beautiful with it.
Loop by thanks for coming
I really like this Thanks For Coming song from 2023. Sounds like having a crush in the worst way. Love it. Can't get enough.
Thanks for reading. I haven't written in a while. More to come. With love and trust and friends and hammers...
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