In discussing why contagious mimetic violence is less common than we might expect, Girard points to the problem of the “first stone”: who will start the pile-on? Countervailing social values can restrain individuals from taking this step. Social media platforms incentivize it./1
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Imagine the stoning episode from the gospel where Girard gets the “first stone” concept. If the thrower of the first stone appeared, once the stoning has started they’d recede into the crowd and gain nothing. In the attention economy the equivalent act can reap massive rewards./2
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Hence, the gamified reward mechanism suppresses the countervailing social values that might otherwise raise the bar for “casting the first stone.” These values are even further suppressed the further we move down the chain of mimetic contagion./3
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Given all of this, it’s unsurprising that we can now see a whole class of people who are trying to make careers for themselves (and apparently succeeding sometimes) as “first stone throwers.”/4
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Broken windows discourse policing
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