The VHL: A Dangerous Culture of Engagement

[TenIQ 55]

Introduction:

 

 (1)The VHL Forums have been around for over 10 years at this point in time and we have seen people get over 10 thousand reactions from their peers in the VHL. This can be extremely exciting for those people, as it shows how others interact with their posts in a positive manner. However many issues arise from a system built on reactions, and it's important to fully understand these implications. So today, I will first explain to you the concept of technology-mediated dangerous behaviors, then I will explain the psychological effects of receiving insufficient positive feedback online, and explain ways to mediate this risk.

 

Technology-Mediated Dangerous Behaviors (TMDB):

 

The Causes of Technology-Mediated Dangerous Behaviors:

 (2)To first understand the Idea of TMDBs you first have to understand what causes them. According to Hamed Qahri, a researcher at Colorado State University, we go through a phenomenon known as homeostatic violations. This is where the socially driven creatures that we humans are, receive a negative reaction. This can trigger a stress induced reaction (SIR) and result in rash behaviors. This is one of the primary triggers for a TMDB, and on standard social media apps, can result in life threatening behavior, which has led to multiple deaths around the world, through texting while driving, or participating in dangerous activities to get a photo that will receive more interactions. 

(3)There is another major driving factor known as Social Comparison. People often carefully craft the image of themselves that they put online, whether we know we do it, or it is a subconscious action. This image we create drives others to compare themselves to the other users they see online. We as humans are theorized to experience a psychological trait known as psychological egoism, this is a theorized phenomenon that is supported by a study conducted by Joshua May at the University of Alabama. Psychological egoism states that all humans are influenced by selfish desires, whether these selfish desires lead to selfless acts makes for a different argument, however all humans have a view on the way they think the world sees them. If humans feel that others are doing better than them, it drives TMDBs and leads to the behaviors stated in Paragraph 2.

 

The Correlation of Technology-Mediated Dangerous Behaviors on the VHL:

 (4)The VHL forum is not like a typical Social Media platform, rather than prioritizing fast stimuli material, entering the brain after short periods of time, to keep a user engaged. It prioritizes a slower reactionary based engagement strategy. This means that the users on the VHL Forum are trained to receive, rather than short term rushes of dopamine from seeing the latest trends, to lengthen their attention span through longer articles, where you read about various topics, usually relating to hockey. These interactions are then displayed on a user profile, filling in the two primary triggers of a TMDB, the reactions on any post that a user creates will lead to a homeostatic violation, and viewing your own reaction count compared to others triggers Social Comparison.

 (5)In an Unmatured mind, these factors can result in a stressed induced reaction, resulting in a TMDB. Due to the slower nature of the forums, the behaviors exhibited might not show short term offline dangers, like texting and driving would, but it can result in long term effects on a person's life. This is known as Cognitive Dissonance, this may be something as simple as sharing their real name with someone, or something as major as revealing personal information in an attempt to gather more interactions from their peers on the form.

 

The Dangers of These Behaviors:

 (6)While if a person shares something small, such as a name or personal detail of their life, if they get the reaction that they seek, they will continue participating in this action, eventually they will see less of a reaction when they participate in this behavior, and decide to build on their previous behavior, by providing more personal information about themselves. This is known as the Slippery Slope or in extreme cases Intermittent Explosive Disorder. Which is where a person becomes so reliant on these reactions that it becomes violent episodes rather than short term stressed induced reactions.

 

The Effects of Receiving Insufficient Positive Feedback: (RIPF)

 

The Actions That Register as Insuffecient Positive Feedback:

 (7)Online, we like to build projects, aimed at creating feedback for ourselves to trigger the dopamine response most humans have experienced. An amazing example of an online project would be this paper, based around the very topic. When we create these projects, we often have an idea of being better than the rest, which loops back into the topic of Social Comparison as explained in paragraph 3. Once we feel we have generated content better than those that we choose to compare it too. We create an idea in our head of the feedback we are looking to receive, and then fully expect to receive this feedback. We go online, post our project, whether it be through video, text, or application, and we await to see our feedback,

 (8)Once this project is posted, we gain a short dopamine rush through a psychological effect known as anticipated response, where the neurotransmitter associated with pleasure and reward triggers because we feel we have already earned this reaction. This short term rush solidifies in our brain that we deserve these reactions, and causes us to further expect a positive reaction, sometimes even uplifting our expectations to unreasonable and unrealistic heights.

 

The Insufficient Feedback Provided By Our Audience:

 (9)We as humans often understand that it will take time to build reaction to our expectation, so we often view this feedback through 2 stages, the Immediate Positive and/or Negative Feedback (IPF/INF) and the Long Term Positive to Negative Feedback (LTPNF). Our initial reaction is quick, usually within a couple hours of posting the project, we look at the Positive feedback and Negative feedback separately and occasionally only look for positive feedback. We will see a quick initial rush of support and be excited that our reaction is living up to our expectations, however these reactions will often start to die down after a couple of hours. 

 (10)After these reactions start to slow, we start to experience a reaction similar to that explained in Paragraph 2, we experience Stress Induced Reactions and feel as if we failed, in our creation of the project. While often that is not true, the amygdala often triggers a sad response anyway. This can cause feelings of failure, low self worth, and ultimately depression.

 

The Effects of Receiving Insufficient Positive Feedback:

(11)Humans self worth is often a result of a series of factors, the most important being that of Self Comparison (Paragraph 3) and Psychological Egoism (Paragraph 3-4). These two factors are greatly affected through receiving insufficient feedback. We often create expectations through comparison, and when these expectations are not met we often see that as a showing that our work did not size up to that of others, but that we as people can not meet the expectations that others seem to receive so easily. 

 (12)This lowering of our self worth leads to saddening effects, and if the cycle repeats over extended periods of time, we eventually develop social media fatigue, but because of the dopamine rush that we experience from it, we struggle to detach ourselves from these website that are ultimately the root of the issue. This continued depressive state can lead to much more serious effects on our mental health, which continues to degrade over time if we don’t seek professional help. All because of 1 simple button.

 

The Overly Complicated Solution:

 

Solution #1: Remove the like Button:

 (13)It seems like a simple fix, all we have to do is remove the like button, and this domino effect of SIRs, TMDBs, RIPFs and SMFs can all be avoided. Right? It's sadly not that simple. As the author of my favorite book has stated time and time again, “Nature Enjoys it's balance, you can’t remove bad without removing good.” As much pain as the like button provides, it's also a rewarding factor for doing a good job. The like button influences people to continue creating content, as well as to put effort into their content. Removing the like button ultimately changes the forum from an active and thriving space, to a simple, likely inactive place, where there is no reward or incentive to continue being active.

 (14)Sadly, this is why like buttons have been provided on almost every social media platform, and those who don’t are often not active or predominant in today's social climate. Ever heard of Maven? It's a perfect example of this sad flaw with the human brain. A social media with no follows, no likes, and as of this moment, practically no users.

 

Solution #2: Educate Rather Than Retaliate:

 (15)As established, we can’t rely on a system without a reward for posting, so instead we have to educate ourselves on the effects of these issues. If we fully understand the damages that this has on our brains, we can better react to situations, and better help others who don’t fully understand the effects of a system like this. We can’t entirely educate or help everyone, so this solution has a downside, and a very big one, but as stated in Paragraph 13, nature likes its balance. If we want to continue with a forum being active, we have to have likes, but we need to understand how these likes affect us. So ultimately we can continue to safely interact on social media.

 (16) More importantly, we can also strive to provide support for those who provide their projects on the forum. I am guilty of almost never reacting or commenting on others posts, and through my research on this topic, I have realized that this is an issue in itself. Most of the time, one person's issue can be amplified by that of other people. We need to make it a habit to support each other, in our projects, and in our struggles through issues like this. The VHL has a very tight knit community, and we are already so supportive of each other, but we can reach even further, to support everyone.

 

 

Read Further Into The Issue:

 This paper is the collage of many different researchers' work, put together by someone who is dangerously under qualified to be talking about the issue. There are very likely mistakes throughout the paper so I can’t encourage you enough to go read about the issue through the professionals. Everything I have said here has been closely fact checked through at least 2 papers, so any issues you find are that of my fault alone, and not a research failure on any of the papers below. I truly hope I built your knowledge on this correctly and if you remain confused on any of the topics above, do not worry, it took me a while to get it myself. The people below do an incredible job of explaining everything.

 Further, this project is also apart of a paper I am writing for an actual project in my educational career, if you are knowledgeable about the topic and spot any inconsistencies, I ask that you please point it out to me, as most of the information I have laid down in this paper, is also going to be submitted as a paper about the effects of social media on our psychological health for a grade. Please take everything written here into account, as this is a real issue affecting one inside and outside of the VHL, and providing a like on a smaller youtube video, or some words of encouragement for someone, can make them feel like their countless hours of work has affected one person. All it takes is changing 10 people, and you have changed the world. You are amazing and have a great day!

 

*The words used to label word count have been excluded from the counts themselves

(2003 Words Without Sources)

(2098 Words With Sources)

 

https://www.rochester.edu/newscenter/getting-fewer-likes-on-social-media-can-make-teens-anxious-and-depressed-453482/

https://iep.utm.edu/psychological-egoism/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_dissonance

https://www.webmd.com/mental-health/what-is-intermittent-explosive-disorder

https://www.apa.org/monitor/2022/11/strain-media-overload#:~:text=The term “doomscrolling” emerged during,negative affect%2C” he said.

https://www.qcc.cuny.edu/socialSciences/ppecorino/ETHICS_TEXT/Chapter_5_Teleological_Theories_Egoism/Psychological_Egoism.htm#:~:text=Psychological egoism suggests that all,be motivated by self interest.

https://biz.source.colostate.edu/research-reveals-the-link-between-social-media-likes-and-dangerous-user-behavior/#:~:text=The research explains that there,users whose expectations are met.

 

[Pifferfish 836]

#dontforumanddrive

[Triller 1,786]

A long justification for not liking my stuff.  Madness.

[sadie 1,106]

The psychology of social media is so interesting, despite that at the same time we can see how negative so much of it is. Great article and one that gave me a lot of food for thought.

[mattyIceman 1,281]

As a dude past 40, I'm glad I grew up in a generation that didn't have a smartphone and social media in high school.

[Grape 894]

Retweet

[Victor 11,247]

Is this AI

[TenIQ 55]

6 minutes ago, Victor said:

Is this AI

Lol, no I just tried to label everything to make it an easier read. 

 

https://www.zerogpt.com/

[gorlab 4,378]

No way your IQ is only 10...