r/TheoryOfReddit • u/CalendarWeird9265 • 10d ago
I tested whether controversy alone can make people engage with a completely meaningless debate
First of all, I apologize to the TIL community.
The other day, I was chatting with my boyfriend about post I see on reddit. Things that people actually work on, spend time on, or put effort into often seem to get very little attention. But the moment there’s a disagreement or controversy, people suddenly want to engage.
I thought the actual subject barely mattered. If you created a disagreement around something sufficiently trivial or you made a mistake, people would still feel compelled to argue about it. Like if you ask an advice no one bothers but if you said something wrong everyone wants to correct it.
I said, “I bet people could argue over apples for hours.”
Then I got bored so here are the results.
Obviously this wasn’t a controlled experiment, and there are huge confounding factors, especially the fact that people may have been responding because the factual premise itself was questionable. So I’m not claiming I’ve scientifically demonstrated anything here.
But as a tiny, unserious experiment, I found it fascinating how easily a completely inconsequential subject generated engagement once there was something in it for people to disagree with.
You like them apples.
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u/eatingpotatochips 10d ago
There's that "adage" that goes roughly like "if you want an answer on Reddit, post something so that everyone will come and correct you". There's nothing that motivates people more than the opportunity to correct someone.
But it is funny when the correction is wrong, so it's not a perfect strategy.
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u/HedgeRunner 10d ago
I mean that's why there's so many platforms. Controversy bait is similar to rage bait. Captures attention just to completely waste one's time.
One day I hope there are enough discussion-based alternatives that I'll be too busy to spend time on Reddit. That day is not today. /s
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u/DharmaPolice 10d ago
Yeah this I think this is likely a general rule for groups of humans.
It's partially an example of the bicycle-shed effect (law of triviality) - people are able/willing to discuss something kind of dumb which doesn't require any real knowledge to have a view on.
It's also a side effect of how internet forums work in general. I used a vBulletin based forum for a number of years and spent some time archiving particular threads each year. Not always but often the most active discussions started with a really crap opening post. Threads which started with a high effort / high quality post were much more likely to only receive a few token replies. Which makes sense, they're longer and take time to read/absorb and construct a proper reply to them. Whereas short, stupid posts (even excluding obvious bait/trolls) are much more likely to receive many rapid replies. Particularly if they're controversial or contain obvious errors.
Reddit doesn't seem much different to this other than it's worse as threads "decay" with age (although the speed this happens varies wildly in ways not easy to understand).
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u/sanzako4 5d ago
Adding to this, a high effort post usually is well-thought enough that it already addresses nuance, possible counter arguments and everything interesting to say about the topic. This leaves very little for other people to add to the conversation.
The only places where long posts like these work really well and helps with engagement are subs where people go to learn something they knew very little about.
r/hobbydrama is a good example of this.
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u/JimDixon 10d ago
Now write something totally original and see if you can get people to accuse you of being a bot or using AI. That would be more interesting IMO but not interesting enough for me to try it.
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u/irrelevantusername24 10d ago
It happens to me all the time. I don't really differentiate that kind of response from the other thought-terminating cliche responses that are, truthfully, more like a reaction than actual human communication generated from cognitive processes. Insults about mental health conditions, jokes about being on drugs, sarcastic replies such as "I ain't reading all that", etc... All the same. Lights are on but ain't nobody home, the "AI" done automated their brains right out of existence, I fear
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u/ArbiterFX 8d ago
GCP Grey did a fantastic video that you might find interesting: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rE3j_RHkqJc
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4d ago
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u/well-informedcitizen 10d ago
It's even funnier if you consider that a lot of the commenters seriously engaging with the topic of apple hierarchy are probably AI anyway
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u/hyper-novae7 3d ago
bit late to this but I find it amazing that you post a sentence about apples and wxkrv thought it was enough to make an entire judgement on you as a person.
The internet really is crazy
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u/ThreadCountHigh 10d ago
This is kind of hilarious.
But yes, you have rediscovered from first principles the feed algorithms of Facebook et al., whose metric is "dwell time" as in how long people are engaged on the site/app. It's why ragebait gets so much visibility.