The 4 Selfish Reasons People Share a Thing on Facebook

And mankind's bias for uplifting content goes further than that. Stories depicting purely negative events ("Young Father Tries to Pay Off Student Loans in Pennies, Trips, Is Literally Crushed by Debt") are shared less than stories about negative events that have been given a positive spin ("Man Being Literally Crushed By Debt Leaves Video Message To His Unborn Son"). On the other hand, other research has found that both positive and negative-themed content is shared more than content deemed to be emotionally neutral, although I'm not 100 percent sure what they mean by that. Maybe a video titled: "This mom stared at a wall for 10 minutes. You won't believe what happened next!"

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"Whoa. People have GOT to see this."

We also share stuff because ...

Add an angle to the story that injects a "high arousal" emotion like anger, though, and things change: an angry take on a particular event is more likely to be shared than a more moderate one on the same event. Think of a negative-themed article as like a pizza base: when it's by itself, nobody is interested, but cram on some toppings (speculations and angles that make readers either extremely anxious or very angry) and all of a sudden people are hanging around your kitchen eyeing your oven and acting as if they like you. In fact, we love our bad-news pizza so much that it trumps our bias against negative content: negative stories that have been topped with fear- or anger-causing content will be shared as much as positive stuff about unexpected rainbows and baby geese learning to swim.

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You don't want to know which part of the pizza represents Ebola.

This is an example of a distraction technique that magicians call misdirection, and in this case, the distraction was the hot-button topic of feminism. "Has feminism become so anti-men that women are now deliberately growing extra boobs just to avoid dudes?" asked countless people on Facebooks across the country, all the while ignoring the more important question of how the hell she got that extra boob. We overlooked the questionable supernumerary breast, just like we overlook the magician quietly pulling a replacement dove from his nose, because the subject Hessler raised gave us a chance to jump in with our opinions about something controversial.

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"Pay no attention to what my left hand is doing as I coincidentally invite you
to express your views on Vice President Joe Biden."

This "get people arguing about shit" tactic applies to non-pranks as well. Take this poor guy who hit the "like" button on everything on his Facebook page for two days and then observed the flood of content that hit his computer like a wave of profile-pictured sewage. He discovered an oddly specific way that news sites encouraged readers to engage with their stories. The site would present a piece of news ("The governor of New York recently shot a horse! Just a random goddamn horse!"), add a controversial opinion followed by an exclamation point ("GOOD!"), and then finish with a question ("Do YOU agree that our governors should be shooting more horses?"). It's become a standard format because that shit works: readers are already so brimming with argument-energy that they're almost physically compelled to comment and share.

See, in today's America, opinions about Islam and Islamophobia have been colonized by political sides. Visit the left-wing site AlterNet and you'll find articles like "Why the New Atheists Need to Stop Slamming Islam." Go to the extremely right-wing Breitbart and you'll find reports assuring readers that dangerous Islamic "lone wolf" attacks are being covered up by the mainstream media, as well as intriguing headlines like "Iraq War Vet Banned From Daughter's School for Opposing Muslim Homework," because what's the point of getting homework if you can't even rub bacon on it without it getting offended? This is America, damn it.

When you think about it, this consistent political divide about the religion isn't logical: you'd think there were things a lot of AlterNet readers would find objectionable about every organized religion, and one would assume that most Breitbart readers, bless 'em, would at least appreciate all sincere forms of devotion to God. But this is the way things have worked out in this country, and now it seems so natural that most of us don't question it, just like most of us don't think about why eating free-range, local meat is something liberals do, but hunting your own free-range, local meat is arch-conservative.

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And apparently eating a swan in public is "weird" and "barbaric," even if it looked at you funny.
Whatever you say, Americans.

Now, two-thirds of Americans identify as either conservative or liberal, and social media is a popular way of expressing that identity: in a New York Times study, 68 percent of people said they shared content online to "give people a better sense of who they are and what they care about." But going on to Facebook and typing: "Hey guys, just want to remind you today that I'm a liberal, and not at all like my aunt who keeps posting misspelled memes about Obamacare" is somewhat crude, not to mention confrontational. So instead, why not share that Affleck video as a way of politely signaling the exact same thing?

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Alternatively, you could just post a picture of yourself dressed like this.

This isn't to say that we're all sitting around thinking about how to best inform people of our political views via Facebook videos, any more than people who purchase expensive handbags are asking, "I wonder if carrying this expensive bag will make people offer me more money if I ask for it?" or men buying sports cars are thinking, "I can't wait until this car raises my testosterone!" It's something most of us do unconsciously. And, of course, not everyone who shares a video on Facebook is doing it to subconsciously express their own personal political brand. Maybe you shared the Affleck video because you were genuinely interested in the debate, or maybe the subject resonates with you personally because you're a Muslim or you like writing Sam Harris erotic fan fiction or something like that. In that case, you're simply unlucky enough to have interests that line up on an unrelated cultural fault line.

But maybe the next time you're going to hit "share" on a story about a subject you don't usually post about, ask yourself whether it's because it's something that actually touches you deeply, or if it's because you want to be seen as the kind of guy who shares it. And then whatever the answer, you should probably just post a picture of a cat instead. Cat pictures are the greatest.

C. Coville has a Twitter here and a Tumblr here.

For more from C. Coville, check out 4 Everyday Things That Make Us Way Angrier Than They Should. And then check out 19 Instagram Food Pics From Famous Fictional Characters.