Going viral produces an addictive physiological thrill unlike ordinary attention

Evidence

I pulled out my Blackberry as I walked and posted this chant to Twitter. I got into my apartment and sat down at my computer. Something weird was happening. This tweet was getting a whole lot of attention, and a lot of likes, and people were retweeting it throughout the world. Something really struck a nerve—the police brutality? The analogy to an uprising in a Muslim country? I didn’t understand. Nothing remotely like this had ever happened to me before. Young correspondents in Brazil working for a California newspaper don’t exactly have a huge platform. For the first time, I was going viral. I still don’t know if I can describe the feeling. It was as if my entire body was being electrocuted with the vaguely pleasant notion that my words were connecting with thousands, millions of people all at once. And then the feeling would vanish until I looked back at the screen, transfixed as I watched the numbers go up and up. It was deeply strange, and I didn’t feel comfortable. — Vincent Bevins, If We Burn, 396

Categorization

• XREF: Documents the incentive structure of social-media engagement that will recur as a theme throughout the mass-protest decade; also connects to dopamine-loop research on virality. — connects to: A curiosity-driven agent can become addicted to novelty like media — Brian Christian, The Alignment Problem, 905; Routine stimulant use can silently escalate into full addiction — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement: How People Do Harm…, 1730; Facebook’s design intentionally exploits variable-reward dopamine hits to maximize user time. — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 1437 (+1 more)

Broader Connections

• A curiosity-driven agent can become addicted to novelty like media #expands (0.75) — Brian Christian, The Alignment Problem, 905
• Facebook’s design intentionally exploits variable-reward dopamine hits to maximize user time. #qualifies (0.75) — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 1437
• Routine stimulant use can silently escalate into full addiction #expands (0.72) — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 1730
• Games that feel addictive mirror the risk-management demands of everyday life #exemplifies (0.72) — Max Haiven, Cultures of Financialization, 371