When attention is very scarce, and you have some discretionary ability to boost signals, any act of public curiosity becomes a political act.
Whatever the content of your opinion on X, simply being publicly curious about X (minimum=liking a tweet) sends a message.
Conversation
I suspect one reason drew fire for broaching sex redistribution is simply because as a signal booster he diverted scarce public attention to that topic.
The actual opinion matters less than the act of putting that topic in the public short-term magic 7±2 meme buffer
3
2
27
Boosting the topic says “the needs/motives/desires of this group X are worth more attention than those of every other group I’m not signal-boosting.”
I suspect it would be useful for public figures to preface displays of public curiosity with justification of importance.
2
1
10
Unlike private curiosity, public curiosity of thought leaders deploys more than their own attention. It’s a public attention allocation decision. When you tweet or RT something, you’re deploying num_followers*clickbaitness*avg_time attention,
Like national park hygiene norms.
2
1
25
In an attention scarcity (or information overload) environment people are desperate for meta-signals on what to pay attention to.
Hell, there’s even a account that RTs things likes. That’s how starved the information economy is for quality meta-signals.
2
3
26
The “fiat news” concept from is useful here. It’s a billion channel universe and you have some ability to mint fiat news whether you are aware of it or not, so be mindful what you boost.
Replying to
I have always tended to self-censor public curiosity to things I think will harmoniously interest others in that space. This is from before I had any sort of platform.
I suspect this is a basic personality trait. I just don’t like making a scene. I take all conflict offline.
17
