The marvel of heat pumps also can teach us something about social media, I think. Because social media is an emotion pump, with hate the most prominent. Social media is a hate pump. Short thread. /1
The principle of a heat pump is to extract heat from one place, and pump it to another. The science amazes, for example there’s 85% as much heat in air at -18 degrees celsius as there is at +21 degrees celsius. That heat can be extracted and pumped inside, to warm us. /2
The key fact - there is always heat. Not to be confused with temperature, a crucial distinction. The heat pump extracts and concentrates the heat, with its compressor. And this is where we can cross over into an analogy with social media, that I think is more than an analogy. /3
There is always hate in society. The ‘temperature’ of society, how intensely that hate expresses itself, varies. From peace to war. But even within the peace, as with heat, the hate is still there. And so along comes social media. The hate pump./4
Social media extracts the hate, and compresses it, magnifies it, like a heat pump. By gathering it in its diffuse state, circulating in society, and compressing it within the platform, in groups. It then pumps the result back into wider society itself, using the platform. /5
It’s a hate pump. It can also ‘pump’ other emotions, but hate gets the most clicks, far and away. I think it’s important to understand this pumping, because we need to understand not just this compression and pumping process, but just as much the circulating, diffuse hate. /6
The idea that peace and war are opposites is dangerous. It’s during our peace that most of the damage is done to society, by ignoring the hate. It’s in peacetime we dismantle the institutions that ensure the ongoing peace, and adopt fantasy philosophies of individual freedom. /7
And that’s where we are now, incapable of fighting a pandemic, because many are delusional, thinking that the freedoms they’ve enjoyed are the natural state of things. Rather than a highly regulated and continuously maintained state. Hate pumps, social media, compress and…/8
…pump the disaffected emotion of millions of people, and perversely ends up turning it back against themselves, by further destroying the institutions like government that gave them any freedom and wealth they may have had. So where to from here? I think it’s critical to…/9
…remember that the hate pump magnifies something that was already there, but diffuse. We need to call that out, to not mistake that grossly compressed and magnified hatred for society itself. We need to use a reverse-cycle hate pump, just as we use reverse-cycle heat pumps. /10
To switch them back into cooling mode, so that we extract the heat from our shared public spaces and move it back into that default, diffuse state that creates peace. Use the platforms to compress and magnify counter-narratives instead, that can then be pumped into those…/11
…public spaces to counter the hate. That’s much more than just individuals complaining to a platform when they’re a victim of the hate pump. It’s the community as a whole taking back the space and re-shaping it. Switching the hate pump to cooling mode. /end
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