Part of my job as a cultural/political commentator is that I'm subjected to a vast amount of internet content and the conversations that spring up around it. Over time, you start to notice behavioral patterns from content creators and content consumers.
Right now, nothing gets more interaction than outrage. While this isn't necessarily news, the desperation for attention has caused people to become extreme in various ways. We live in an attention economy because attention can result in making money, and when you're doing what's necessary to get money in an attention economy, all attention is good attention.
Even negative attention.
This has given birth to some interesting characters. I'd describe them, but I'd rather just point them out to you by example.
Let's start with the streamer or content creator whose entire schtick is to go out and annoy or inconvenience people. They develop fame off of going and doing things that they know break rules or make people's day a little worse. Their actions go viral, they get attention, and people talk negatively about them.
Do this enough, and you can get really popular because people will begin wanting to see what awful thing you get up to next. Take this guy, for instance, who showed up at a store and began streaming there against store policy, resulting in him getting into a verbal altercation with one of the employees. It's stupid, the streamer looks bad, but he's likely going to be more popular as a result of this.
IRL Streamers are so cringe. Constantly annoying the public for attention. Losers. pic.twitter.com/pj5ljBoYJx
— Catch Up (@CatchUpFeed) February 29, 2024
YouTuber Misha Petrov released a video on Thursday discussing this very thing. While she gives it the umbrella term "Main Character Syndrome," many of these fall under working towards a negative response for attention.
Another type of negative reaction I've noticed gaining steam is the woman pretending to be a giant slut. Watch these videos if you can stomach them.
The biggest problem for chicks like this is at the end of the day they’re just super dull, uninteresting people.
— Mel (@Villgecrazylady) February 4, 2024
If the only thing you have to show for a 10 day vacation to France is a TikTok bragging about spreading your legs multiple times a day you’re boring AF sis and now… pic.twitter.com/avZKwVQUDr
This OnlyFans model was outraged because the school called her to pick up her son who had thrown up.
— Dr. Jebra Faushay (@JebraFaushay) February 28, 2024
This ruined her plans. And she’s going to sit in the car and rant about it. pic.twitter.com/BuZW97yv3i
These kinds of videos are becoming more and more frequent. Why? It's pretty easy to deduce. What's the one thing they all have in common besides women talking like they're cheap whores?
They're all advertisements.
Each of these women wants you to believe they're at an 11 on the sexual scale, and these videos are another way of telling you that you can see them get up to some really raunchy stuff on their OnlyFans (or equivalent) page. Are these girls actually that desperate or open for sexual activity? Likely not. The benefit of modern porn is that these women don't actually have to do any interacting with people or even their audience. If they get successful enough they can pay someone to do that.
(READ: The Increase in Sex Work Is the Decline of Society)
When you break it down, all of these kinds of videos are advertisements, whether or not they're sexual. It's all about attention.
So the obvious solution is to ignore them, right?
I wish it were that simple. Even if you did a great job of not giving these people any daylight, everyone else will. Whether you like it or not, they will become a topic of conversation, and ultimately, this is a good thing. More discussion about how ridiculous these people are will eventually lead to a cultural shift of seeing these people as desperate and cringe-inducing. Society will ultimately tire of the schtick and people will move on.
The law of undulation is absolute.
Negative attention is an age-old method of garnering benefits dating back to before the internet. It comes and goes in waves, but it can go faster by agreeing with one another that it's stupid. It will never truly go away. It will always be around, but conversation is going to happen about it. Joining the conversation to point out how ridiculous and try-hard it is is the best move.
To point out how highlighting these issues and denouncing them ultimately helps, I'm going to show you the end result of these conversations...the inevitable pushback.
Behold! A guy trying to steal from a store like he's seen everyone else doing on the internet, but in a neighborhood where the residents weren't about to let that kind of infection spread.
Vermont isn't California and this would be thief found that out...#FAFO #crime #Vermont #HomeDepot #good #GoodNews pic.twitter.com/kJbQOLKmdJ
— Mrgunsngear (@Mrgunsngear) February 29, 2024
