“Let’s not forget that the little emotions are the great captains of our lives and we obey them without realizing it.” ― Vincent Van Gogh
I was horrified by the 1977 book “Coma,” where unsuspecting hospital patients are rendered comatose and their healthy organs harvested for sale. A similar premise appears in multiple books and films, but none seems quite as relevant to the current moment as “The Matrix,” where it’s not physical organs being harvested, but human energy.
That’s what came to mind when I stumbled upon a relatively new phrase: “rage farming,” first coined in 2022 by an investigative journalist. Rage farming is the practice of posting inflammatory headlines and content for the purpose of engaging readers to boost internet traffic to a site, a page, or a cause. The more people who appear to engage, through clicks and comments and reactions, the more exposure a site gets. The more exposure, the more revenue they can generate. It doesn’t make any difference if the content is true (in most cases it’s half-truths or outright lies) it’s intentionally manipulated to trigger an emotional reaction from the viewer, good or bad. It’s kind of like the old saying that all publicity is good publicity, which has been attributed to P.T. Barnum, who is also attributed with saying “There’s a sucker born every minute.” They kind of go together.
A good chunk of rage farming can be traced to “troll factories,” which NATO defines as “an entity conducting disinformation propaganda activities on the Internet.” Troll factories produce fake social media profiles, websites, posts, messages, comments, and simulated disputes. With the inclusion of artificial intelligence and automation, along with real profiles that get “cloned” for nefarious purposes, it’s harder and harder to tell what’s real and what’s not. Throw in artificial intelligence and try to discern a real picture from a computer-generated one. Even audio and video have been hijacked. You can’t “see it to believe it” anymore when it comes to pictures, because what you see might just be a simulation designed to strum your emotional heartstrings.
Emotions have been referred to as “energy in motion.” When emotions are triggered, energy is released. Now think about how much of that energy is being exploited every time you get triggered. You just plugged yourself into the machine and let it feed off of you. Energy, even emotional energy, is a limited resource. And we wonder why we’re all so tired all the time!
All this stuff isn’t going away, and it’s naive to think we can just avoid it by avoiding social media or the internet. It’s everywhere, including text messages and scammy phone calls. It’s not that much different than those old chain letters that showed up in your mailbox with predictions of doom if you didn’t copy the letter 10 times and send it to your friends. And we did it! Until someone told us the truth and we knew better. In the same way that knowing about email and text and phone scams helps us not fall prey to unscrupulous individuals who want our money, knowing troll factories and rage farming are out there is one way to prevent having our emotional energy exploited by bad actors.
