I’m Pretty Sure We Actually Have To Live In The Society We Build

My last post was the one about kneading the dough for the challah.  The following funny-if-it-weren’t-so-sad thing occurred when I went to post that story:

I had updated the website service I use to do the online journal and as I was looking at it one final time before I officially published that post, I noticed a new button on the screen.  It was colored red, as if to grab my attention, with the fraction 28/100 on it. I wondered what it was – it looked like a word count, like you’ve used up 28 of your 100 words or something, but that made no sense given the context.  So i moved the mouse over to click on it.  As the cursor hovered over the button, a text box appeared that said, “Headline Score.”  Ah ha, now i get it.  It was some new automated tool to score my “headline” – the title I had chosen for the post, “Kneading Dough” in this case.  Seemed interesting enough, so I went ahead and clicked on it.  And yes, you guessed it, the computer didn’t like my title.  It gave me a score of 28 out of 100.  And to help orient me, it said that a good score would have been between 40 and 60, but for best results I should strive for a score above 70.  On what basis did it arrive at the conclusion that I had just failed blogging 101?  Well, with one more click I opened up a long list of attributes about my title, each with its own individual score.  For example, for emotional words, I scored a 0%.  One should strive for an emotional word score between 10-15%, because, I kid you not, “emotionally triggered headlines are likely to drive more clicks.”  Moving on, under the “Sentiment” heading I was informed that my title had a neutral sentiment.  “Headlines that are strongly positive or negative tend to get more engagement than neutral ones.” Further down the list I saw that I had 0% “power words,” not enough uncommon words and at the same time not enough common words (yes, you read that correctly)  and that the character count of my title was not long enough – “You have space to add more keywords and power words to boost your rankings and click-through rate.”

OK, I thought.  I see where this is going.  Never mind that the reason I’m writing this journal in the first place is just to get out there what is actually happening to us, what we are actually experiencing – rather than trying to alter the facts to better serve the all-powerful “click-through” god.  Whatever happened to authenticity (I think, once upon a time, it used be called honesty?) Now everything can only be about how to get more likes, clicks, views, and ultimately more power and money (i think, once upon a time, it used to be called greed?).  Never mind that.  Not only have the motivations for all we do in life morphed into an all encompassing greed, but the specific things  – the specific words, actually – which are most successful in the society we have created are those words which will “emotionally trigger” other people.  And not words which are neutral, which are nuanced, calibrated, or centrist, but rather words which are either “strongly positive or strongly negative.”  Excuse me, but has anyone seen the polarization in our society today?  Who here really thinks that what we need are more “strongly positive or strongly negative” words?  Is it just me?  Can no-one else see that this is emblematic of exactly the problems which are tearing apart our society today?  

Now to be fair, the new “headline score” feature did have a nifty little text box where you could “try again.”   Now that I had seen the error of my ways, I was given a second chance!  I could try a different headline, and right then and there, it would generate a new score for my new possible headline.  That way I could easily experiment with different titles, choosing the one that would be the most emotionally triggering and polarizing!  What fun!  So the first thing I did was try changing my title to something more suitable for the awesome society in which we live – how’s this, I thought: “Angrily Pounding The Crap Out Of The Dough” And, wouldn’t you know it, that title garnered a full 84 points out of 100!!  Now I was way above even the 70 mark!  Specifically, my new title had a negative sentiment.  And as the computer confirmed for me, “Negative headlines are attention-grabbing and tend to perform better than neutral ones.” I now had 13% emotional words, and once again the computer reminded me that “emotionally triggered headlines are likely to drive more clicks.”  So to be fair, and to try and not be so negative about it, I tried a different approach.  This time I changed it to, “Lovingly Kneading The Shabbat Challah Dough”  That dropped the score all the way down to 40/100.  Better than my original score of 28 for the simple title “Kneading Dough” but certainly worse than the unabashedly angry and negative title I had tried earlier.  Turns out, “Lovingly Kneading The Shabbat Challah Dough” has 0% emotionally triggering words, and has a neutral sentiment.  And as we all know, say it with me now, “emotionally triggered headlines are likely to drive more clicks.” Bottom line – if you want to be successful, try to emotionally trigger people.  And try to be polarizing.

Is it just me? 

I mean, as far as I’m aware we’re not just building legos here – we actually have to live in the society we build…