{"id":194567,"date":"2025-10-12T08:50:09","date_gmt":"2025-10-12T08:50:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/194567\/"},"modified":"2025-10-12T08:50:09","modified_gmt":"2025-10-12T08:50:09","slug":"how-we-broke-the-internet-and-called-it-engagement","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/194567\/","title":{"rendered":"How We Broke The Internet And Called It Engagement"},"content":{"rendered":"

Modern life runs hot. Everyone\u2019s doing too much, sleeping too little, and scrolling through the gaps. The workday never ends; the inbox never empties; the bills multiply; the phone vibrates like a nervous system outside our skin. Society has become a kind of treadmill economy \u2014 fast, loud, and slightly cruel \u2014 where the reward for endurance is simply permission to keep running. And just when we think we can\u2019t take on more, the feed finds new ways to demand our attention \u2014 tiny digital jolts that trigger us a little more each time we look.<\/p>\n

Might sound rich coming from people in the business, but the truth is we\u2019re not immune either. We\u2019ve all been swept along by the same algorithmic tide \u2014 higher up the beach maybe, but just as powerless against the waves.<\/p>\n

In this kind of world, irritation isn\u2019t a flaw; it\u2019s the expected outcome. When people are pushed together, stretched thin, and constantly measured, tempers shorten and patience runs dry. It\u2019s not psychology \u2014 it\u2019s pressure. And sooner or later, pressure finds a crack.<\/p>\n

We\u2019ve tried to optimise our lives the same way we optimise our feeds. Every part of modern living \u2014 work, relationships, even rest \u2014 now runs on the same dopamine circuitry as our phones. We expect precision, speed, and personalisation in everything, from dinner delivery to love. But the more we chase the perfectly tailored life, the less we can afford it. Every year, the list of things to buy grows longer while our disposable time and income shrink. No wonder people are having fewer children \u2014 the math doesn\u2019t add up, and it\u2019s not something a couple of extra leave days will fix.<\/p>\n

Social media didn\u2019t cause that tension \u2014 it just perfected it. It took the ambient stress of modern life and turned it into fuel. The platforms learned to harvest frustration the way factories burn waste heat: nothing escapes, everything gets monetised. Every sigh, scroll, or eye-roll became data \u2014 a signal to feed the next cycle.<\/p>\n

Once the algorithms learned that agitation equals attention, the feedback loop took over. The more tense, tired, or distracted we became, the more we engaged \u2014 and the more the system rewarded the emotions that kept us hooked. What began as communication evolved into emotional automation. The platforms weren\u2019t reflecting our state of mind; they were engineering it.<\/p>\n

And once emotion could be measured, it became a target. The line between expressing and provoking vanished, and soon every industry that depended on attention \u2014 marketing, journalism, politics \u2014 began optimising for the same thing: reaction.<\/p>\n

Optimised into a corner<\/p>\n

\u201cEngagement\u201d was meant to prove people were paying attention. Now it\u2019s the only language we speak. Likes, shares, comments \u2014 they\u2019re not signs of success anymore; they are success. In a world that measures meaning by metrics, silence reads like failure.<\/p>\n

We\u2019ve taken one of the most pressurised moments in human history and layered it with an entirely new kind of psychological strain. We built a system that tests human emotion at industrial scale, without any of the safeguards we\u2019d demand from other powerful substances. We\u2019d never release a new drug without decades of trials, yet we unleashed social media on billions with zero oversight. If pharmaceuticals are recalled for raising suicide risk, what do we call the platforms linked to thousands? One day, we\u2019ll look back at this era the way we now look at heroin cough syrup \u2014 the medical equivalent of handing kids heroin and saying, \u201cYou\u2019ll feel better soon.\u201d<\/p>\n

Every platform, every newsroom dashboard, every campaign report boiled the value of human attention down to clicks, views, and shares. And so we tested \u2014 endlessly. Which headline makes more people click? Which thumbnail keeps them watching longer? Which tone makes them comment instead of scroll? It was the largest behavioural experiment in human history, and the result was what any decent statistician could have predicted: we optimised ourselves into a corner.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s what happens when you climb a hill so efficiently you forget to notice the higher peaks around you \u2014 when every step forward only narrows your view. It\u2019s like a professional who\u2019s spent years climbing the ladder in a single career \u2014 taking every course, every promotion, every networking opportunity \u2014 until they\u2019ve become the best they can possibly be on that path. The problem is that while they\u2019ve reached the top of their particular hill, there are higher peaks elsewhere: different industries, new ways of thinking. Getting there, though, would mean climbing down first \u2014 taking a pay cut, losing prestige, starting over. So they stay put, even as each new \u201coptimisation\u201d \u2014 more hustle, more credentials, more of the same \u2014 yields diminishing returns or even backfires. That\u2019s where marketing and media find themselves today: having maximised for outrage, speed, and virality, they\u2019ve reached a peak that looked like success but now traps them. Climbing higher will first require the courage to descend.<\/p>\n

Social media and the industries orbiting it \u2014 marketing, journalism, politics \u2014 have spent two decades hill-climbing toward engagement. Now we\u2019re stuck at the top of a mediocre hill built from outrage, sentimentality, and tribal dopamine. Any move toward calmer, saner communication makes the graphs dip, so no one dares move.<\/p>\n

The result is a system so tuned to emotional reaction that it can\u2019t produce anything else. Marketing and media both run on the same engagement engine now, competing for the same psychological triggers. What used to be a handshake between two industries has become a knife fight for the same feed space. The marketer learned to provoke; the journalist learned to market. One sells products; the other sells problems. Both are just selling feelings.<\/p>\n

Sydney Sweeney\u2019s Amazing Genes<\/p>\n

You can see the logic playing out in campaigns everywhere. When American Eagle rolled out its \u201cgenes\/jeans\u201d campaign with Sydney Sweeney, it wasn\u2019t courting coincidence \u2014 it was stress-testing outrage. The creative brief literally called for something that would \u201cspark conversation,\u201d which in marketing dialect means \u201clet\u2019s get people arguing.\u201d The ad went viral, sales spiked, and the algorithm smiled. There have been countless others, each one engineered to tap the same nervous system we keep mistaking for culture. At a certain point, every brand\u2019s \u201cbold\u201d campaign looks exactly like every other brand\u2019s bold campaign \u2014 an overproduced provocation pretending to be purpose.<\/p>\n

Legacy journalism tried to resist this shift. For a while, editors held the line against clickbait and cheap outrage. But resistance came at a cost \u2014 traffic fell, budgets shrank, and new media filled the vacuum. In defending nuance and objectivity, traditional outlets lost the very platforms that once made them influential. What began as principle became paralysis. And like any system under strain, every attempt to fix it only sped up the collapse.<\/p>\n

Newsrooms have learned to A\/B-test moral panic just as efficiently as marketers A\/B-test slogans. We might tell ourselves it\u2019s for the public interest \u2014 but we know that public interest without reach is useless.<\/p>\n

And yes, that includes us. We\u2019ve written headlines that made people angrier than they needed to be, and stories that performed better precisely because they provoked. The truth is, nobody in media has clean hands here \u2014 only varying degrees of self-awareness.<\/p>\n

AI didn\u2019t invent this mess, but it\u2019s accelerating it like lighter fluid. We used to need agencies, crews, and budgets to manufacture controversy. Now anyone with a laptop can generate a high-definition moral crisis in an afternoon. When million-dollar ad quality costs a few thousand euros \u2014 or a good prompt \u2014 perfection loses its premium. Every brand can have flawless video, and every creator can go viral. Which means none of it matters anymore. The only way to stand out is to turn the emotional volume even higher. The gradient descent continues, but the slope\u2019s getting steeper.<\/p>\n

System Overload<\/p>\n

At this point, calling it a \u201cnews cycle\u201d feels generous \u2014 it\u2019s an outrage economy. Attention is currency, and anger is the mint. Malta just runs the prototype at a smaller scale. A single post can set off a national chain reaction: a headline becomes a Facebook post, the post becomes a talk show, the talk show becomes the next headline. It\u2019s not disinformation; it\u2019s amplification \u2014 the sound of a small country echoing itself to exhaustion.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s easy to blame journalists and marketers for this, and fair enough \u2014 we all fed the machine. But the real villains are the platforms that designed engagement as the only currency worth earning. They knew what outrage did to people long before it became fashionable to call it a problem. They just didn\u2019t care, because rage was a renewable resource and attention was the oil beneath it. When people say \u201csocial media is toxic,\u201d they\u2019re describing a perfectly functioning business model.<\/p>\n

The result is a society optimised not for truth or connection or even entertainment, but for stimulation. The system rewards friction over clarity, reaction over reflection, and emotional charge over informational value. It\u2019s a brilliant piece of engineering and a catastrophic piece of culture. And now, with AI producing infinite variations of the same content faster than we can feel things about it, the loop is eating itself. Engagement is no longer a differentiator; it\u2019s just background noise.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s where we are \u2014 stranded on our little hill of dopamine, clutching our engagement metrics while the ground gives way. The system is beginning to buckle under its own optimisation. And when it does, the people and institutions that survive won\u2019t be the ones who shouted the loudest. They\u2019ll be the ones who figured out what comes after the feed.<\/p>\n

Can you relate?\u00a0<\/p>\n

READ NEXT: Guest Post: Gozo\u2019s Ferry Terminals Are Proof That Malta Has Forgotten What Equality Looks Like<\/a>\"\"Yannick joined Lovin Malta in March 2021 having started out in journalism in 2016. He is passionate about politics and the way our society is governed, and anything to do with numbers and graphs.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Modern life runs hot. Everyone\u2019s doing too much, sleeping too little, and scrolling through the gaps. The workday…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":194568,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[1638,86,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-194567","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-internet","8":"tag-internet","9":"tag-technology","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/194567","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=194567"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/194567\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/194568"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=194567"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=194567"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=194567"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}