Opinion

ADORNEY: Elon Musk’s Latest Move Shows How Twitter Encourages People To Live Outside Reality

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Julian Adorney Julian Adorney is a writer and marketing consultant with the Foundation for Economic Education.
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On April 20, Elon Musk announced that legacy blue check marks had gone the way of the dodo bird. From now on, the primary way to obtain a blue check mark is to pay $8 per month for Twitter Blue. Some legacy blue-checks proceeded to paint the loss in apocalyptic terms. On Saturday, prominent civil rights attorney Scott Hechinger tweeted that “Musk has purposefully destroyed one of the most effective tools of local movements & advocates to be heard & connect with journalists, decision makers, & those with power to amplify critical messages and perspectives.”

This is a clear example of catastrophizing. According to Psychology Today, “Catastrophizing is a cognitive distortion that prompts people to jump to the worst possible conclusion, usually with very limited information or objective reason to despair.” “When a situation is upsetting, but not necessarily catastrophic,” the authors write, “they still feel like they are in the midst of a crisis.” Musk’s removal of legacy blue check marks may have caused some confusion, but the idea that it deals a devastating blow to “local movements and advocates” is a little far-fetched.

It’s not just Hechinger; Twitter is full of examples of catastrophic thinking. In February, Washington Post reporter Taylor Lorenz tweeted that “we’re living in a late stage capitalist hellscape during an ongoing deadly pandemic w[ith] record wealth inequality, no social safety net/job security, as climate change cooks the world.” In March, singer/songwriter Alyssa MacKenzie tweeted about a supposed coming genocide of trans people. According to MacKenzie, “Transgender people in the United States are now the victims of stage 8 of the Ten Steps of Genocide.” One of the steps of genocide that MacKenzie mentions is “Organization.” 

What’s her evidence that trans people are the victims of this kind of planned hatred? Famed author J.K Rowling “Liked” a supposedly transphobic tweet

Catastrophizing is a cognitive distortion, and one of its side effects is that it tends to make us miserable. When we believe that a celebrity merely Liking a tweet is moving the United States a big step closer to genocide, we end up in a state of perpetual terror towards anyone who doesn’t think the way we do. 

Twitter encourages this kind of catastrophizing. Each apocalyptic tweet gets Likes and Retweets by people on our side. Hechinger’s post about Twitter Blue has received 10,800 Likes and over 2,300 Retweets. MacKenzie’s post warning of a coming genocide against trans people has received 76,000 Likes and 28,200 Retweets. Each of these likes and Retweets gives the author of the tweet a hit of dopamine. According to Sean Parker, founding president of Facebook, “Whenever someone likes or comments on a post or photograph, we give you a little dopamine hit.” Dopamine is associated with feelings of bliss and happiness. As humans, we’re hardwired to seek out hits of the chemical. 

The dopamine hits from likes and retweets tell our brain that we’re on the right track. Instead of the terror and anxiety of people like MacKenzie or Lorenz being seen as a red flag that might signal that they should recalibrate their distorted thinking, it’s now seen as a green flag. We’re learning to virtue signal terror. Conversely, calm tweets that signal emotional resilience are unlikely to go viral, meaning they deliver fewer dopamine hits. We’re being incentivized to talk (and therefore to think) like the world is always on the brink of ending, because that’s what gets the most dopamine into our system.

None of this is healthy, and it’s likely one reason we have a mental health crisis on our hands. According to the National Institute of Mental Health, 19.1% of US adults suffered from an anxiety disorder sometime in the last year. We are increasingly terrified of the world and of each other. We need a return to sanity. A good first step would be to recognize catastrophizing as a cry for help rather than an accurate depiction of a world that generally keeps on getting better.

Julian Adorney is a writer and marketing consultant with the Foundation for Economic Education.

The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller.