A State of (Digital) Nature: Cancel culture & the gamification of political discourse
Status hominum naturalis antequam in societatem coiretur, bellum fuerit; neque hoc simpliciter, sed bellum omnium in omnes.
The natural state of men, before they entered into society, was a mere war, and that not simply, but a war of all men against all men.
–Thomas Hobbes, De Cive, 1642
Humanity has spent the last several thousand years distancing ourselves from a state of nature, crafting structures of accountability and cooperation, balancing power, and designing rules to keep our worst tendencies in check. The internet era brought us back to square one.
The Environment
It's easy to watch the unraveling of our political discourse and believe that, somehow, people have simply lost the moral character they once possessed. But people haven't changed. What's changed are the environmental rules that govern our interactions. We can see this in the dynamics of the recent past compared to the world we find ourselves in today.
The 20th Century
Geographic Friction. Ideas that gained popularity in one part of the world had trouble gaining popularity in another. Ideas generally had to succeed in practice before receiving attention elsewhere.
Centralized Truth. A handful of institutions (both media and governmental) determined the way real-world events coalesced into an overarching narrative. These institutions enjoyed a relatively high degree of public trust.
Social Capital. Informal social structures were coherent and durable. In 1985, the average American reported having at least three people in whom they could confide.
Together, these elements resulted in a relatively stable intellectual environment that gave significant advantages to incumbent ideologies.
The 21st Century
Frictionless Wormholes. Geography is now irrelevant, and ideas spawned in one part of the globe can emerge on the opposite side overnight.
Decentralized Truth. Any individual with a Twitter account can now become a micro-institution of truth and reason. Tribes of meaning-making emerge from swarming micro-institutions. Trust in the pre-internet era's meaning-making institutions has eroded.
Atomized Individuals. Informal social structures are incoherent and weak. In 2004, the average American reported having no one in whom they could confide.
Together, these shifts result in an unstable intellectual environment that gives significant advantage to ideologies that successfully trigger a compounding feedback loop through social contagion.
"Following the light of the sun, we left the Old World." – Christopher Columbus
The Tribes
Within this 21st century environment we can easily identify three major tribes that have coalesced; the reactionary right, the progressive left, and the classical liberals.
The Reactionary Right
Views the Left as an existential threat to traditional American culture and values that must be eliminated.
Seeks to reinstate hierarchies.
Has become larger, more extreme, and more violent.
Enjoys political power and represents the current White House's base.
The Progressive Left
Views the Right as an unchecked threat to liberal democracy that must face consequences.
Seeks to inhibit the expansion of white supremacy and promote equality.
Has become larger, louder, and more "woke".
Enjoys cultural power and represents the 21st century's most accepted forms of youth culture.
The Classical Liberals
View the Left's "cancel culture" as an over-extended mob and a threat to liberal democracy.
Seek to preserve forums of free speech and open debate on any and all ideas that enter the arena.
Have become gradually less relevant as they lose ground to both the Left and Right.
Enjoy institutional power and represents the 20th century's incumbent "establishment" ideology.
The Game Loop
At the center of the 21st century's new world order is a simple game loop. I will use Twitter as an example but the dynamic plays out just as easily on Facebook or any other social media platform. The loop begins with a young, typical American of the 21st century – atomized and disconnected, with no friends or family in whom he feels he can confide.
Validation. He joins Twitter and quickly finds that when his tweets are mildly political, he receives more likes and retweets. These are satisfying dopamine hits. Perhaps he held some doubts about his views when he tweeted, but now his doubt is gone. He feels social validation for the first time in ages.
Tribe Affiliation. Current events–say, a Black Lives Matter protest–provides fuel for any of the tribes described above. He may choose to focus on police brutality and tweet "Black Lives Matter!" in support, and receive validation from the Left. Or he may choose to focus on property damage, tweet "The rioting must stop!" and receive validation from the Right. He is subsequently exposed to and internalizes more extreme ideas (some of which are surfaced via ranking algorithms).
Tribe Status. Soon, the tweets are as much a signal of in-group status as they are political commentary. The unspoken game is a competition of who can be the most pure and true to the cause. One path leads to "ACAB," another to "MAGA." The sense of influence and power he gets from watching his likes and retweets skyrocket is addictive.
Totalization. The young man is no longer capable of seeing beyond the totalizing worldview that embraced him and gave him a sense of belonging. He is now the one validating other disillusioned people. The game loop has hit its asymptote.
This pattern has been repeating itself around the globe for years. It eventually spills out of the internet and into the real world; a recent study in Germany found a significant relationship between Facebook usage and violent attacks on refugees. Social media is a machine for turning the basic human need of acceptance into extremism.
Cancel Culture
Classical Liberals often call for a "free marketplace of ideas". Ironically, that is precisely what social media provides–ideas are transacted nearly instantaneously and without the friction of geography. It is an evolutionary environment for thought. Ideas with high transmissibility can rapidly proliferate.
Contrary to Classical Liberal claims, however, this freedom does not mean "the best" ideas win. Like a virus successfully adapted to take advantage of the human need for physical contact, the ideas that take advantage of the game loop are the ideas that triumph. Both cancel culture and the right-wing extremism it seeks to constrain are emergent outcomes of the internet and the design of its platforms.
Classical Liberals Abide by 20th Century Logic
Echoing a common liberal refrain, the recent Harpers letter wrote that, "the way to defeat bad ideas is by exposure..." This classical liberal framework functioned beautifully in the 20th century, but we no longer live in that era. Exposure to bad ideas (coupled with the validation and contagion mechanisms of social media's game loop) is precisely what leads to more extreme outcomes. The more extreme the idea, the more validation it receives–and the possibility that it becomes the subject of outrage as well only serves to push the individual closer to the voices of validation.
In the pre-internet era, we had both geographic friction and centralized (and often regulated) sources of truth. Today, we have neither. This new reality leads us to a situation that tests the bounds of the liberal framework. How would we have responded, for example, if Al-Qaeda recruited outside of American high schools in the 1990's? At the time, of course, this was impossible. Today, it is not. The internet creates wormholes.
Invasive Thought-Species & Extralegal Mob Justice
In nature, evolutionary environments achieve meta-stability in the absence of exogenous shocks. Among the possible exogenous shocks that can knock an ecosystem into chaos is the sudden introduction of a predator from another ecosystem, such as the South American cane toad in Australia, the Japanese beetle in North America, or the Burmese python in the Florida Everglades. These invasive species multiply and terrorize with no natural predators to keep them in check.
If ideas are akin to species in an evolutionary environment, then the digital wormholes of the internet are the cargo ships that unwittingly transport invasive thought-species to new land. Like invasive species in nature, invasive thought-species can quickly dominate an unsuspecting ecosystem.
X-ray of an American alligator in the belly of a Burmese python. These species evolved continents apart.
There is no (and perhaps can be no) formal recourse for the introduction of an invasive thought-species. Any attempt at formalizing consequences quickly leads to thought-policing. The law can only respond to the most extreme real-world effects of the invasive thought-species (e.g. violence). By that time, however, it is far too late; the invasive thought-species has become unstoppable and has already propelled itself to the White House.
So emerges the "cancel culture" of the Left; a networked attempt at preventing the spread of right-wing invasive thought-species with which formal legal structures cannot reckon. In other words, extralegal mob justice.
Extralegal mob justice is a crude and imprecise tool. There is no due process, no precedent, no carefully articulated legal boundaries. In its desperation to stop the social contagion of right-wing extremism by striking earlier in the game loop, it hunts down milder and milder cases until wholly innocent people join the list of casualties.
Another manifestation of the game loop, extralegal mob justice provides its own brand of social validation and in-group status, thereby swelling its ranks and expanding its scope even as it generally fails to impede the growth of right-wing extremism. The individualized addiction to likes and retweets is joined by collective dopamine hits for the tribe, what Helen Lewis describes as "the cheap sugar rush of tokenistic cancellations," which are far removed from any real structural changes (except for new corporate PR strategies).
Now we have right-wing extremists and extralegal mobs to worry about, warring against the backdrop of perfectly-unblemished castles of structural injustice (meanwhile, the liberals are off somewhere penning another open letter).
A Fitness Function for the 21st Century
The result of the game loop and the 21st century environment is a new Hobbesian state of nature: a "war of all men against all men." The formal structures and institutions of the 20th century–perhaps the pinnacle of human progress–are impotent in this new world. Where do we go from here?
We can begin by acknowledging a key difference between our current state of nature and the one that Hobbes described from the dawn of history; much of this environment was designed–not by gods or by natural laws, but by engineers and designers in Silicon Valley. These technologists are the most consequential architects the world has ever known. While their intentions may be pure, intentions matter very little at the scale of civilization. The consequences of a few seemingly small decisions born on a whiteboard in California have threatened centuries of human progress.
The fitness function of today's internet–the environmental rule set to which our discourse is adapted–leads us in ever-more extreme directions. By looking upstream, however, we can begin redesigning the mechanisms of the game loop and end the gamification of political discourse.
Unplug The Scoreboard. We can improve the quality of our online discourse by attenuating the role of quantity in the design of social media interfaces. In other words; to end the game, unplug the scoreboard. Today’s online experience is a flurry of numbers at the expense of real communication. The demetrification of social media–the elimination of "points" in the form of likes and retweets–can create space for emphasis on the content of messages rather than their “performance”. While a ‘Like’ button may seem inconsequential, it is precisely where the game loop begins.
Let Users Design Their Algorithm. We can reassess the need for algorithmic ranking of social media content–which boosts the sensational at the expense of the nuanced and accurate–or, reimagine the design of those algorithms. Why not allow users to determine the criteria by which their content is sorted? The current behavioralist approach assumes that because I click on outraging content that I must want outraging content. Instead, platforms could give users an opportunity to stop and consciously articulate what they want from their social media experience.
End Engagement-Based Business Models. We can acknowledge that Silicon Valley's technologists are merely a middle-layer in a Russian nesting doll of warped incentives; the designers of these systems are themselves a subsystem. Tech firms are players in a shareholder-based economy that demands maximized returns. Social media platforms are designed as games to be won because games are highly profitable. The game loop that drives tribal extremism is the same one that drives engagement overall, so change won't come voluntarily. The tech-sector regulation of the 21st century must realign these incentives so that the aforementioned redesigns (and others we have yet to imagine) might be possible.
Rebuild The World Beyond The Screen. We can work to rebuild our social support structures back in the real world so that the human need for social connection needn't be found in the welcoming arms of online extremists. We can regenerate community in neighborhood spaces, local support structures in civic organizations, and opportunities for connection in both new and time-tested forms of social infrastructure. Physical, human connection remains the strongest antidote to our social challenges even as they manifest in virtual spaces.
The ecosystem of our collective meaning-making apparatus has been knocked into chaos, threatening the basis of global liberal democracy. This isn’t the world that anyone meant to create, but through a series of accidents and unintended consequences it is indeed where we have found ourselves: a digital war of all men against all men. We’ve navigated our way out of a state of nature once before. Do we have the fortitude to do it again?