We've all been there: It's late at night, you know you should be sleeping, your eyes are watering from the glare off of your iPhone, and there you are, gawking at the audacity of some stranger's Instafeed. Instead of any of the many far more fulfilling activities you could be pursuing, you've chosen to connect the dots between this person's carefully cultivated feed as if you were Carrie Mathison in the throes of a manic episode. (Ha! You think, drawing a parallel between a Halloween group and a selfie from 72 weeks ago, She always hides her ankles!) And, if you're especially bold (and the person has a big enough social following) perhaps you alert your friends to the spectacle by 'atting' them in the comments section.
Yup, you're engaging in one of the most socially acceptable forms of insanity. Call it the Cringe Binge, Hate Stalking, or Shame Following, you (almost involuntarily) stay on top of this person's feed as feverishly as you would an ex. The difference is you don't even like this person—hell, you find them downright embarrassing—and yet you find yourself seeking out their unique brand of pain. Like biting off a particularly persistent hangnail, taking just one more shot when you've already had too much to drink, or watching a TV show you find infuriating (hello, Kardashians!), it's a hard-to-justify behavior that somehow also makes perfect sense. The Cringe Binge is like Hate-Watching but with a far more personal, curated angle: Everyone hate-watched season two of True Detective; your intimate relationship with @CuteGirl647 is uniquely your own.
In an effort to get to the bottom of why we do it, I called up Karen North, Ph.D., a professor of digital social media and the director of the Annenberg Program on Online Communities at the USC Annenberg School, to chat about this curious side effect of our collective social media addiction. Here, five science-backed reasons to explain why we love to hate certain people online:
Tyler Joe
1 | Our natural proclivities have finally found a suitable playground
'Human behavior and the human psyche will never change and never have changed. What changes are the technologies that mediate our behaviors and our interactions,' North says. 'So when people say, "Oh my god. Look what people are doing," what they're seeing are behaviors people have always done. They're just more visible right now because they're being displayed on social media.'
2 | You don't hate these people at all
'You know how they say that the opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference? When people have strong feelings about someone else or a topic—whether the feelings are positive or negative—people become interested and, sometimes, compelled to seek more information,' North explains. 'If you didn't care, you wouldn't care.'
3 | Social media warps our connections to others
'It used to be that if you hated somebody or were angry or fascinated in a negative way, you never had access to their lives. You could be angry or curious, but eventually it would go away because you don't run in the same circles as them, you wouldn't be in the same room as them, you wouldn't know anything about them,' she says. 'But now you can go peer into their lives as if you had a real connection with them.'
4 | So, um, you're kind of an addict
'Laypeople love to talk about catharsis. Catharsis is vastly overvalued. Most of the time, [the idea of] "getting it out of your system" is not true. Most of the time what you're likely to find is a practice effect rather than a catharsis effect,' she says. 'The frightening thing about hate-stalking and the ability to act on your obsession is the more you look into your lives, and the more voyeuristic you are with them.'
5 | It's a behavior that's more likely to plague people who follow the rules
'It's likely that you, as a person, are fascinated by people who violate social norms. To you, it's like, "This is a thrill seeker. Who would violate social norms? It's amazing that this person can do that,"' North says when I reveal my own tendency to pore over an acquaintance's self-absorbed style blog. 'It's the desire to understand how and why people would do that. Why do people watch reality TV? It's the same reason. Because people are living on the fringe of social norms. And we're fascinated by it because most people play by the norms. When people violate social norms, aren't we all fascinated?'
Words: Justine Harman
From Elle.com
