It doesn’t need conspiracy or coordination. The incentives alone are sufficient. The platform pays the public to perform, and the performance produces the disorder.

The platform architecture forces convergence: authentic conviction expressed through the same escalating, performative patterns. Which isn't great for functional democracy.

Even sincere actors get pulled into the same incentive field. Their beliefs may be genuine, but the attention economy doesn’t distinguish. To be heard, they must compete with the grifters on the grifters’ terms.

It performs rage for profit but generates real anger in the audience. That anger feeds real political behaviour. Performative signals become grievances, and the disordered discourse migrates from the feed into institutions and streets.

It produces a performative ecosystem. Actors aren’t communicating; they’re staging provocations for yield. The result is disordered discourse: signals detached from truth, identity shaped by escalation, and a feedback loop where the performance eclipses reality itself.

Cautiously pesimistic 🙃