The horrifying truth behind social media relevance stems from controversial content

by Delaney Warner,

Student Life Editor

Trigger Warning: This article includes mention of suicide.

Social media encourages the exploitation of online users and others in order to gain relevancy. The algorithms of multiple platforms promote negative and graphic content as a stream of users comment against the original content. The comments attacking the creator for posting often gives the video more traction, only giving the content more views and the cycle continues; raising the question, is it better to inform creators of the horrific content or should viewers hit “not interested” and scroll?

Last year, 2020, a video circulated on TikTok, the most downloaded app of July 2020, displaying a graphic suicide video. Users began to comment on the video, begging the creator to remove it, however this only put the video on more people’s “For You Page”. TikTok worked tirelessly to remove the video, however multiple other users continued to re-upload the video. The ordeal sparked other users to create videos warning people on the platform of the video. Yet, these efforts only created curiosity and many began seeking out the video to see for themselves.

Although many users had good intentions, their attempts only brought more traction to the video. TikTok does offer options called “Not Interested” and “Report” that allow users to not see content like the video they just watched. Some argue that it’s better to use these tools such as Ally Soto (9), “I personally would just hit not interested” as she doesn’t wish to spend time viewing similar videos to the negative content. On the contrary, Emma Bresnahan (12) believes that, “people should inform the user” of why their content is negative, however they should, “actually inform them” instead of just attacking them. Quite often, negative videos receive thousands of comments bashing the appearance of the creator, failing to inform them of why their viewpoint may be questionable in society.

In my experience creating a fake TikTok account where I posted only negative content, views skyrocketed as my confidence plummeted. Photo by Delaney Warner (11).

In order to prove this, I created a fake TikTok account and posted mostly positive content for the first few weeks. In total, 21 positive videos were posted and collectively gained 10k views. Approximately a month after the first video was created, Warner posted a video lip syncing to an excerpt of Nicki Minaji’s Grindin Freestyle singing, “Dang, lil mama, you is such a loser.” I captioned the video “people that watch anime” and watched as the video climbed to 29.6k views, 2199 likes, and 2,016 comments.

Surely enough, hundreds of the comments attacked me for the “distance between her eyes,” her “massive forehead,” and my personal favorite, referred to me as the “ice age baby.” Significantly less comments told me that I shouldn’t judge people based off of a hobby that they enjoy doing, these comments actually informed me of the ignorance behind the meaningless post.

Social media allows for anyone to gain a platform through the tap of their finger and the algorithms behind it push for negative content to be seen. The algorithm behind social media is corrupting users. If someone really wants to amass thousands of views why wouldn’t they just post controversial content? As time goes on this problem will only continue to worsen until the algorithms change.