Brains clicking & clicking brains

You’ve heard of Dopamine right ? That’s the end goal of a “like”: Giving dopamine. But a laugh does the same thing. When someone laughs with you, it feels good. Thanks to him, you’re releasing Dopamine. Or maybe Oxytocin. Or maybe both, sometimes Noradrenaline even. In other words, laughing at one’s joke, is rewarding him, and in Virtual life : liking a post is rewarding it.

Liking, laughing or any reinforcement really, is trying to feel closer to someone – explicitly or not, consciously or not – in the matrix (lol, we’ll call it “the graph” for now ok ?). And as people share, like, joke, poke in the graph, groups are created.

So let’s look at a social graph now :

So there’s an evolution there. Some nodes grow thanks to likes. But… What’s worth a like ? That’s a question that groups implicitly answer – there’s no “group rule book”, it’s different everywhere. Even though we’re now aware of some universal dynamics, like: scapegoating is powerful in mimetic-rivalry situations, vocab’ is key to integration and stigmergy is power.

Katagelastics

Of course some likes are so far away, from what groups usually like, that it’s gotta be sarcastic. If we believe the “relief theory”, sarcasm helps lessen social tension… And then gets the group closer together – if the joke is not too harmful! But I guess sometimes you’ve gotta go with “superiority theory”, when the joke produces strong negative emotions, when it’s harmful. And that’s how katagelastics fry chips. For a brief relief.

 So what’s a “friedchip” ? A fried–chip is not a node without enough connections to function properly – it’s not about lonelyness. A friedchip is a node that was central to a group, and burnt because of too much connections it couldn’t handle. It’s about implicit lies & fake likes.

It’s ok. Friedchips can be repaired. Cause we’re not really talking about chips, and brains can’t really fry.

(no, they can’t – “schyzophrenia”, “depression” etc. are not fried-brains, it’s just a chip in the wrong grid at the wrong time: it gives a weird light).

To repair a friedchip, take it out of the grid: make it lonely, help it understand the virtues of silence, stabilize its internal state (might take some time), and then gradually feed it back to the grid until it grows new connections, through meaningfull interactions.

Just find a nice place in the grid & of course keep safe if the grid goes crazy and every chip is frying (Just read books guys).

PEER LEARNING! – What is social attention ?