I have a great tip for you today to help you go viral more often on social media: show a lot of hate. While we all say that we want to more uplifting content on social media, hate spreads much more quickly.
I know you’ve all seen it, often from very “nice” people online that show outright hatred for certain groups. In a recent podcast from Adam Grant, Jay Van Bavel shared a massive study that made the numbers very clear:
Analyzing posts from news media accounts and US congressional members (n = 2,730,215), we found that posts about the political out-group were shared or retweeted about twice as often as posts about the in-group. Each individual term referring to the political out-group increased the odds of a social media post being shared by 67%.
The idea of “ingroups vs outgroups” is something that I first shared a few months ago, but it’s something I notice all the time now that I’m aware of it. As Jay points out in that show, we also see similar actions at the Olympics, when “patriotism” goes too far and turns into “nationalism”. Rooting for your side to win is great, but actively working against others is where the problems come in.
Jay’s solution?
“Just because you identify with the group doesn’t mean you’re going to discriminate against outgroups. If the norm is inclusivity, the more you identify with the group, the more inclusive you become, and the more you embrace other people and differences in other groups and cooperate more, it’s not a bad thing as long as we have healthy norms.”
Fight for your side and fight for what you believe in, but be a good human.
