I can't point to documentation on this one. It's been a day of construction so I'm kinda wobbly. But I feel like I've seen ample discussion of the fact that "engagement" is not naturally something you want. It's a metric that has been misapplied. You don't want the hamster pacing the cage biting at the bars and endlessly grooming, you want the little dude chillin' out and running on the wheel after dark. But what we measure is the bar biting.

The Internet has been about "engagement" since the dawn of social media, and that's a real problem. We don't go to the pub to feel mad and anxious, we go to hang out. "engagement" has become this thing that drives the majority of our social interactions. Everything we do online is valued by how much it riles us up.

I used to get so bored I'd browse /b/. Not for long. It was legitimately evil. Ogrish had shock value but, like, there wasn't this community that just marinated in it. And I do think that creating an environment where doing more and more extreme things for kicks is going to end up with extremity.