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So, uh, I feel like this post straddles the line between Friday Fun Thread, because I'm only like, 49% serious about it, but it's definitely culture war worthy, so, you know. Please remember I'm only partially serious. I'm not going to die on this hill, and gun to my head, I don't really think this happened. But... I think it could have.
Could Steven Crowder's Marriage Have Been Targeted by Silicon Valley?
Steven Crowder has gone the route of many youtubers into, IMHO, algorithm triggered insanity. Youtube content creators have been having mental health struggles for almost as long as it's been a job. I saw one youtuber describe it as having a robot boss that refuses to tell you what they want. And you keep throwing effort into their implacable gaping maw, and wait to see if the algorithm rewards you with income. If it does or doesn't, you have no idea either way what you did to please it. But you know you must.
This may have hit it's high water mark when a mentally ill Youtuber went to shoot up Youtube's offices.
So I see lots of content creators lose their damned mind. Something in the algorithm changes, they can't pay their bills anymore, they can't contact any actual human at Youtube about what to do, and gradually or suddenly they begin acting erratically out of desperation and anxiety. Steven Crowder was no different. His deteriorating mental health, paranoia, and controlling behavior are as plain to see as the sun in the sky.
What was different about Crowder was we know that he was specifically targeted by social media companies.
So, if we take as a given that algorithm chasing drives people insane, and that furthermore Steven Crowder was specifically targeted by Silicon Valley, what does that have to do with his marriage?
Well, on a human level, divorce is a social contagion of sorts. Backtracking and caveats aside, the raw numbers go like this
And when you are talking about social media's influence on divorce
But this is all the background radiation from the no-fault divorce atom bomb going off 50 years ago.
Could Silicon Valley, not unlike how they targeted Crowder's business through the algorithm, having also targeted his marriage? Could they have crafted an Iago algorithm and had it target Crowder and his wife: to sow distrust, resentment, and a belief that there are better options out there? Ten years ago Facebook was caught experimenting on user's emotions by adjusting the algorithm they were exposed to.. It's not like they don't have the technology.
If you look at this in relationship terms, this is gaslighting and abuse. Entity A is trying to act according to entity B's rules, but B is deliberately altering natural feedback in order to keep entity A isolated and weak. All A sees is that they try things that should work, but there's no sign of those things working, and so their model of the world gradually disconnects from reality.
I didn't see a link to the paper, but the article gave no indication that there was a reason to suppose a causal link. It seems entirely plausible that there's a hidden 3rd factor that contributes to divorce rates in both the subject, and in the subject's social circle. It seems like a lot of "post hoc ergo propter hoc". (And you identify a potential mechanism and cause for a 3rd factor later!)
I doubt very much that it's deliberate. Bullies don't usually set out to cause the exact set of symptoms that their victims develop. Perhaps there were people who were deliberately pushing this guy's buttons to see what kind of damage they could do, but even if someone takes credit for intentionally causing the result, I suspect that it'd just be narcissistic post facto justfication at work. ("Yes, of course I planned that, aren't I smart?")
Ain’t nothing natural about this feedback. A is taking a trip into weird corners of the psyche even before B starts pulling the rug.
The converse is when people talk about social media as addictive, promoting gambling, and so on. It’s a crazy artificial environment we hooked up in pursuit of…cred. Money. Connection? Weirdness should be the default assumption.
In some ways, it seems like a game, or most other types of job. It's an artificial toy system, but as long as it's kept contained, there's nothing horribly unusual about molding a bit of your brain into a shape that reacts to the output of the system. (Whether doing so is "good" is a different question, but it often seems to be necessary for modern life.) But yeah, there's a huge problem when you start altering your basic personality and political views based on artificial outputs, especially if you're not aware that that's what you're doing.
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