The Contempt Economy: Five Hundred Likes Don't Make You Less of an Arsehole
Five hundred people laughing at you being an arsehole doesn't make you less of an arsehole.
It just means you've found five hundred people willing to laugh along.
And increasingly, I think we're confusing those two things.
Somebody makes an unnecessarily cruel remark.
Someone gets embarrassed.
A few people laugh.
The comment gets shared, attracts hundreds of reactions and suddenly the person responsible is being celebrated for their extraordinary wit.
Apparently, they've absolutely destroyed somebody.
They've won the argument.
They've delivered the perfect comeback.
They've become the funniest person in the room.
Except there's something missing from that interpretation.
The experience of the person on the receiving end.
Because while one person is enjoying the applause, somebody else might be wondering why they had to become the entertainment in the first place.
And I can't help wondering whether our increasingly obsessional relationship with likes, shares and public approval is beginning to alter the way people judge their own behaviour.
Not simply online.
In everyday life.
Because for most of human history, behaving like an arsehole carried at least some risk of social consequences.
People might challenge you.
They might stop inviting you places.
They might tell you to wind your neck in.
Today, you can behave appallingly towards somebody, publish the interaction online and find hundreds or thousands of strangers willing to reassure you that you were absolutely right.
And I think that's a rather significant change.
When getting a laugh wasn't necessarily winning
We've always laughed at other people.
I don't think there's much point pretending otherwise.
British humour is practically built around sarcasm, piss-taking and finding something ridiculous in the behaviour of the people around us.
I grew up with it.
I still enjoy it.
And I don't particularly want to live in a world where people are frightened to make jokes because somebody, somewhere, might interpret them badly.
But there used to be something that made these interactions rather more complicated.
The other people involved.
Imagine making a particularly sharp remark about a mate in the pub.
Everyone laughs.
You feel pretty pleased with yourself.
But then you notice your mate isn't laughing.
Perhaps he's embarrassed.
Perhaps you've touched on something he's genuinely insecure about.
Perhaps you've simply caught him on a bad day.
What happens next?
Well, if you've got a reasonable degree of social awareness, you might recognise that you've gone too far.
You might apologise.
You might quietly check that he's alright.
Or perhaps somebody else tells you to pack it in.
The important thing is that the social feedback isn't necessarily limited to the laughter.
You can see the person's expression.
You can sense the atmosphere changing.
You can recognise that the remark has had consequences.
You might still think it was funny.
But that doesn't automatically mean it was appropriate.
Now imagine removing most of those feedback mechanisms.
The remark gets published online.
People laugh.
The likes accumulate.
The approving comments arrive.
And somewhere behind all that digital applause, the discomfort of the person being mocked becomes almost invisible.
What does the person making the joke learn?
Potentially, that their behaviour was a success.
Not because they've reflected on whether it was appropriate.
Because they've received a numerical score suggesting everybody loved it.
And that's where I think we've introduced something rather dangerous.
We've made social approval visible, immediate and measurable, while making the consequences of our behaviour remarkably easy to ignore.
The person who got hurt doesn't get a vote
Picture an ordinary interaction.
Someone working behind a shop counter is having difficulty processing a customer's request.
Maybe they're inexperienced.
Maybe the till isn't working.
Maybe they've been dealing with difficult customers all morning.
Someone decides to make a sarcastic remark.
The sort of comment that gets a laugh because it's quick, unexpected and just offensive enough to create a reaction.
A friend records it.
The clip ends up online.
Five hundred people like it.
Another hundred add comments celebrating how thoroughly the employee was put in their place.
The person responsible starts enjoying a little moment of internet fame.
Now consider the employee.
Perhaps they went home feeling humiliated.
Perhaps they spent the evening replaying the interaction.
Perhaps they were already struggling with something nobody in that shop knew anything about.
Or perhaps they shrugged it off and got on with their day.
We don't know.
That's rather the point.
The people watching have almost no information about the person being ridiculed.
They don't know their circumstances.
They don't know their emotional state.
They don't know whether the interaction was representative of anything.
And they don't necessarily care.
They're watching a short piece of entertainment.
They laugh.
They react.
They move on.
Meanwhile, the person making the remark can interpret those reactions as evidence that their behaviour was justified.
But what exactly do those five hundred likes establish?
That five hundred accounts registered approval of something.
They don't establish that the interaction was fair.
They don't establish that the person being mocked deserved it.
They don't establish that the audience understood the full circumstances.
And they certainly don't establish that the behaviour was acceptable.
Popularity is a measure of response. It isn't a measure of morality.
Yet social media has made those two things remarkably easy to confuse.
We've turned approval into a scoreboard
There's a reason those little numbers are so influential.
Human beings care what other people think.
Some more than others, obviously.
But social acceptance has been important to our survival for thousands of years.
We want to belong.
We want to be appreciated.
We notice how other people respond to us.
And we learn from those responses.
Social media didn't invent any of that.
It simply found a way to quantify it.
Likes.
Shares.
Views.
Comments.
Followers.
Suddenly, something as complicated as human approval could be represented by a number beneath a photograph or video.
And that number could grow while you were sitting on the sofa watching television.
In 2016, researchers at UCLA investigated how adolescents responded to photographs presented with different numbers of likes.
The participants were shown images designed to resemble Instagram posts.
Some appeared popular.
Others appeared to have received relatively little attention.
The researchers found that adolescents were more likely to like photographs that appeared to have already received plenty of likes.
That effect occurred with ordinary images and images depicting risky behaviour.
They also observed differences in brain activity involving regions associated with reward processing and social cognition.
Now, that research doesn't demonstrate that receiving likes turns people into bullies.
Nor does it establish that adults respond identically to adolescents.
But it illustrates something important.
Visible social approval can influence how people evaluate and respond to content.
We don't necessarily make every judgement independently.
We notice what other people seem to approve of.
And those signals can influence our own behaviour.
That's perfectly understandable when we're discussing harmless things.
A photograph.
A restaurant recommendation.
A funny video.
But what happens when the thing being rewarded is somebody else's humiliation?
That's where the mechanism becomes considerably more interesting.
Because the social approval hasn't simply been attached to a piece of content.
It's been attached to a particular way of treating another human being.
The applause can teach us what to do next
In 2021, researchers William Brady, Killian McLoughlin, Tuan Doan and Molly Crockett published a fascinating study in Science Advances.
They examined how people learn to express moral outrage on social media.
Their research included analysis of approximately 12.7 million tweets from more than 7,000 users, alongside controlled experiments.
One finding stood out.
When people received positive social feedback for expressions of outrage, they became more likely to express outrage again.
In other words, the reaction from the audience could influence subsequent behaviour.
But there was another important finding.
People also adjusted their expressions of outrage according to what appeared normal within their social networks.
They weren't simply responding to their own rewards.
They were observing what other people did and adapting to the expectations of the environment.
That distinction is important.
Because it introduces two potentially interacting influences.
People learn from the rewards they receive.
And they learn from the behaviour they see being rewarded in others.
Now, moral outrage isn't the same as bullying.
Sometimes outrage is entirely justified.
Sometimes an angry response to injustice is exactly what's required.
And the researchers weren't investigating people making cruel jokes about strangers.
But the underlying learning mechanisms raise questions that extend beyond the particular behaviour being studied.
What happens when somebody receives substantial social approval for humiliating another person?
What happens when that approval is visible to thousands of other people?
And what happens when those people repeatedly witness similar behaviour being celebrated?
I suspect we may be creating a form of social reinforcement that extends far beyond the original interaction.
The person making the remark receives approval.
The people watching learn that this sort of behaviour attracts approval.
Some imitate it.
Others become more accepting of it.
And the behaviour potentially becomes increasingly familiar within particular social groups.
That doesn't mean everybody responds in the same way.
But it suggests the audience may be doing considerably more than simply enjoying the entertainment.
The audience may also be participating in the process through which the behaviour is encouraged and repeated.
And that's a much more consequential proposition than somebody laughing at a joke.
The audience isn't innocent simply because it isn't holding the microphone
This is something I think deserves considerably more attention.
We tend to focus on the person behaving badly.
The bully.
The troll.
The person delivering the insult.
The person recording the humiliation.
But what about everyone encouraging them?
In 2014, researchers Sara Bastiaensens and colleagues published an experimental study examining how young people respond when they witness cyberbullying on social networking sites.
They investigated whether bystanders would help the victim or reinforce the bully.
One of their findings was that the behaviour and identity of other bystanders influenced whether participants intended to join in.
That's important.
Because the audience isn't necessarily passive.
Its response can affect what happens next.
And I think we underestimate that influence.
Imagine someone making a cruel comment beneath a photograph.
The first person laughs.
The second adds another insult.
The third decides to take it a little further.
Soon, the original comment has become a collection of people competing to deliver something even more offensive.
Nobody necessarily intended to create a sustained campaign of humiliation.
Some might genuinely believe they're participating in harmless entertainment.
Some might not even think particularly carefully about what they're doing.
But collectively, they're creating something considerably more unpleasant than the original remark.
And the person receiving those comments experiences the combined effect.
Not a collection of independent jokes.
A crowd.
I think that's an important distinction.
Because one person making a badly judged remark can be unpleasant.
Fifty people joining in can turn that experience into something else entirely.
And the fact that those fifty people each consider their individual contribution relatively harmless doesn't necessarily reduce the cumulative impact.
A hundred people each delivering one insult still leaves somebody receiving a hundred insults.
The arithmetic doesn't change simply because everybody involved believes they're having a laugh.
The social consequences have become ridiculously uneven
There's another aspect of this that bothers me.
The person making the joke might experience the interaction for thirty seconds.
They deliver the remark.
They get a laugh.
They walk away.
Perhaps they upload the clip.
Perhaps they enjoy watching the numbers climb.
But what happens to the person who became the joke?
Their embarrassment might not end when the original interaction finishes.
The video can be shared.
Downloaded.
Reposted.
Commented on.
Rediscovered.
It can reach people they know.
People they work with.
People they've never met.
And every new audience potentially creates another round of scrutiny.
That's a remarkable imbalance.
One person experiences entertainment.
Another person may have to live with the consequences.
And as the audience grows, the person responsible can become increasingly detached from those consequences.
Because once the clip is circulating, they're no longer necessarily witnessing the emotional impact.
They're watching numbers.
The view count.
The comments.
The shares.
The likes.
I find that fascinating.
We've developed systems capable of providing extraordinarily detailed information about how content performs.
But those same systems provide comparatively little information about the human consequences of creating it.
You can see that your video has reached a hundred thousand people.
You can't necessarily see that the person featured has spent three nights unable to sleep.
You can see that a joke has generated five thousand reactions.
You can't necessarily see the embarrassment experienced by the person being mocked.
And when one set of consequences is measured, displayed and celebrated while the other remains largely invisible, I suspect that imbalance can influence which consequences people prioritise.
Not everyone, of course.
But enough people for it to be worth questioning.
What happens when disagreement becomes a spectator sport?
I see another version of this behaviour constantly.
Someone expresses an opinion.
Another person disagrees.
Perfectly normal.
Disagreement is healthy.
It's how we challenge assumptions, test ideas and occasionally discover that we're talking complete bollocks.
But increasingly, I encounter discussions where the apparent objective isn't to challenge the argument.
It's to humiliate the person making it.
The cleverest insult wins.
The most devastating comeback gets celebrated.
The person who makes the other participant look ridiculous attracts the applause.
And the actual subject of the disagreement disappears.
Think about how peculiar that is.
Two people could begin a conversation about something genuinely important.
An issue affecting their community.
A workplace decision.
A disagreement about parenting.
A social problem.
Something that deserves thoughtful consideration.
And within minutes, the conversation can become a competition to see who can make the other person look most stupid.
Not because either person has necessarily produced a stronger argument.
Because one has delivered something that the audience finds entertaining.
It's a familiar dynamic in public debate, and it existed long before social media.
But I wonder whether visible engagement metrics have made it more rewarding.
Because a thoughtful response might change somebody's mind.
A vicious insult might attract five hundred likes.
And if somebody starts measuring the success of their communication through engagement, those outcomes can begin to carry very different values.
There's a difference between persuading somebody and defeating them publicly.
One requires understanding.
The other can sometimes be achieved through ridicule.
And increasingly, I suspect we're rewarding the second while pretending it demonstrates the first.
Engagement isn't the same as enjoyment
In March 2025, researchers published a study in PNAS Nexus examining engagement-driven recommendations on Twitter, now X.
They compared content selected through engagement-based ranking with content presented chronologically.
Their findings were revealing.
The engagement-based system amplified more emotionally charged and hostile political content.
But users didn't necessarily prefer the political material selected by the algorithm.
That's an important distinction.
People can interact with material they don't actually want more of.
They can respond to something because it irritates them.
They can watch something because it makes them uncomfortable.
They can comment because they disagree.
And those interactions can still become signals of engagement.
Now, this research concerned political content on Twitter. It doesn't prove that every recommendation system operates identically, or that every offensive joke receives preferential treatment.
But it demonstrates a problem that I think applies more broadly.
What makes somebody react isn't necessarily what makes their experience better.
And from a commercial perspective, that's a particularly uncomfortable distinction.
Because if a platform benefits when people spend more time interacting with content, it has an incentive to predict what will generate those interactions.
Whether those interactions represent enjoyment, fascination, frustration or disagreement can be more complicated.
Meta, for example, openly describes how its Facebook recommendation systems use thousands of signals, including viewing and engagement behaviour, to personalise feeds.
And to be fair, platforms increasingly provide controls to express negative preferences and refine recommendations.
But the underlying tension remains.
Attention is commercially valuable.
Reactions are measurable.
The longer-term social consequences of repeatedly amplifying particular behaviours are considerably harder to quantify.
I don't believe it's unreasonable to question whether those incentives are always aligned with the welfare of the people using the platforms.
Or the people becoming the subject of the content.
Because the person being mocked might not even have chosen to participate.
Yet their discomfort can become part of somebody else's commercially valuable entertainment.
And that's a very strange arrangement when you think about it.
The numbers don't tell you who didn't laugh
There's another problem with social approval online that I think is easy to overlook.
The visible audience isn't necessarily representative of everybody who witnessed the interaction.
Imagine a video being shown to fifty thousand people.
Five hundred like it.
A hundred leave comments.
Some celebrate the joke.
Others criticise it.
Thousands simply continue scrolling.
What do we know about those silent viewers?
Very little.
Perhaps they thought the joke was hilarious.
Perhaps they thought it was cruel.
Perhaps they barely paid attention.
Perhaps they were uncomfortable but couldn't be bothered to get involved.
Perhaps they didn't want to attract attention themselves.
Yet the visible reactions can create the impression of widespread approval.
And the person responsible may choose to focus on whichever reactions support their existing interpretation.
Five hundred likes.
Proof that everybody loved it.
But that isn't what the number means.
It tells us that five hundred people clicked a particular button.
It doesn't reveal the views of everyone else.
It doesn't tell us why those people reacted.
And it doesn't establish that the behaviour was appropriate.
There's a broader principle here that extends far beyond social media.
The loudest approval isn't necessarily the most representative approval.
And a person's willingness to celebrate something publicly isn't evidence that everybody else agrees.
Yet social platforms can make small, enthusiastic groups appear considerably more influential than they might otherwise be.
Especially when their responses help determine which content receives additional visibility.
I wonder how often people are adjusting their behaviour to satisfy a relatively small but extremely vocal audience.
An audience that may not resemble the people they encounter in everyday life.
The trouble with finding your own crowd
This brings me to something I find particularly interesting.
Historically, if you repeatedly behaved unpleasantly towards people, you might eventually encounter enough social resistance to question your behaviour.
Not always.
Plenty of unpleasant people have surrounded themselves with willing audiences for centuries.
But the opportunities were more limited by geography, relationships and the environments in which people spent their lives.
Now, you can find an audience for almost anything.
Every opinion.
Every prejudice.
Every grievance.
Every particular interpretation of the world.
And every style of humour.
There are obvious benefits to that.
People who previously felt isolated can find communities.
People with unusual interests can discover others who share them.
People can challenge dominant ideas and receive support they might never have found locally.
But the same mechanisms can also reinforce behaviour that deserves challenging.
Imagine somebody who regularly makes unnecessarily cruel remarks about strangers.
Their immediate social circle might find it unpleasant.
Their colleagues might avoid them.
Their family might repeatedly tell them they're going too far.
But online?
They might discover thousands of people who think they're hilarious.
And which audience do they begin identifying with?
The people challenging their behaviour?
Or the people celebrating it?
I suspect that for some individuals, the temptation to prioritise the approving audience is considerable.
Especially when the approval is immediate, visible and repeatedly reinforced.
And there's research that makes this more than a purely speculative concern.
In 2024, communication researcher Joseph Walther published a theoretical analysis examining how signals of social approval might influence the production and spread of hateful messages online.
His argument centres on the idea that people posting hostile material can seek approval from particular audiences, with that approval potentially encouraging further behaviour.
It's a theoretical account rather than conclusive experimental proof of every proposed mechanism.
But it highlights something important.
The relevant audience isn't always society as a whole.
Sometimes it's simply the group whose approval somebody values.
And that's why five hundred approving reactions could matter so much to one person while appearing utterly insignificant to another.
The number isn't necessarily the important part.
It's what the approval represents to the person receiving it.
Children are learning from the applause, too
As a father, this is one of the aspects I find most concerning.
Children are learning how social relationships work.
They're discovering where the boundaries are.
They're experimenting with humour.
They're finding out what makes their friends laugh.
And they're developing an understanding of what gives somebody status within a group.
That process has always involved mistakes.
Children say things they shouldn't.
They take jokes too far.
They embarrass one another.
They copy behaviour without fully understanding it.
I certainly did.
But today's children are observing something previous generations never experienced at anything approaching the same scale.
They're watching people receive enormous public approval for behaviour that might be completely inappropriate in their own friendships.
And the approval is quantified.
A hundred likes.
A thousand likes.
A million views.
Those figures can make a particular behaviour look successful.
Popular.
Admired.
Worth imitating.
Even when the behaviour itself is questionable.
Now, I don't think children are helpless victims of whatever appears on their screens.
They can be remarkably perceptive.
Some will recognise cruelty immediately.
Others will question why people find it entertaining.
And parental guidance, emotional development, temperament and real-world relationships all influence how they interpret what they see.
But the environment matters.
Because children aren't simply learning what people do.
They're learning what other people reward.
And I think those are two different lessons.
Watching somebody behave cruelly might teach a child that cruelty exists.
Watching thousands of people celebrate that cruelty might suggest that cruelty brings social approval.
That's a much more complicated message to navigate.
Especially when a child is developing their own sense of identity and belonging.
I don't want my daughters growing up believing that popularity establishes whether something is right.
I don't want them confusing confidence with aggression.
I don't want them believing that making somebody feel small is an acceptable way to make themselves appear bigger.
And I certainly don't want them learning that joining a laughing crowd is more important than recognising when somebody is being treated badly.
Because sometimes the socially difficult thing is choosing not to laugh.
Sometimes it's refusing to join in.
Sometimes it's quietly checking whether the person everybody else is mocking is alright.
Those behaviours don't necessarily generate applause.
But they're the ones I would rather see rewarded.
Sometimes public criticism is entirely justified
There's an important distinction I don't want to lose in this argument.
Not everybody receiving criticism is an innocent victim.
Not every sharp response is bullying.
And not every publicly celebrated put-down is evidence of a deteriorating society.
Sometimes somebody behaves appallingly and deserves to be challenged.
Sometimes a comedian exposes hypocrisy through ridicule.
Sometimes a sarcastic response highlights the absurdity of somebody's argument more effectively than a thousand carefully constructed words.
And sometimes public scrutiny is necessary precisely because somebody with power has behaved badly.
I don't want to erase those distinctions.
There's a difference between challenging a powerful person's conduct and humiliating somebody simply because they're vulnerable.
There's a difference between holding somebody accountable and encouraging a crowd to destroy them.
And there's a difference between using humour to expose an idea and using humour to attack somebody who happens to be an easy target.
The distinction isn't always obvious.
Context matters.
Power matters.
The nature of the behaviour matters.
And people will reasonably disagree about where the boundaries should sit.
But that complexity is exactly why I don't believe popularity should become the deciding factor.
A thousand people can celebrate a justified challenge.
A thousand people can also celebrate an entirely unjustified humiliation.
The number doesn't tell us which one we're looking at.
We still have to think.
We still have to understand the circumstances.
We still have to exercise judgement.
And that responsibility doesn't disappear simply because the crowd has already decided to laugh.
Are we outsourcing our conscience to the audience?
I think this is the question at the heart of the essay.
We've developed an environment in which people can receive immediate, measurable feedback on almost anything they say or do.
And those feedback mechanisms are increasingly woven into how we communicate.
But approval has never been a particularly reliable measure of whether somebody is behaving well.
History is full of examples of crowds celebrating things they should have challenged.
Human beings are capable of extraordinary compassion.
We're also capable of becoming swept up in collective behaviour that we might never have initiated independently.
Social media hasn't invented those tendencies.
But it has given them extraordinary reach.
And potentially extraordinary speed.
Somebody says something cruel.
The crowd reacts.
The response becomes visible.
The behaviour is rewarded.
Others observe the reward.
And the person responsible may become increasingly comfortable doing something similar again.
Not necessarily because they have consciously decided to become less considerate.
But because they've learned that this particular behaviour produces a desirable response.
Now, I'm not suggesting that every like represents enthusiastic moral approval.
People laugh at things they wouldn't personally do.
They engage with material for countless reasons.
And public feedback can reinforce positive behaviour just as readily as negative behaviour.
But the possibility that visible approval can encourage cruelty deserves serious consideration.
Because if we gradually become accustomed to measuring the success of our behaviour through public reaction, we risk neglecting a much more important question.
Was the behaviour actually appropriate?
Not popular.
Not entertaining.
Not provocative.
Appropriate.
And sometimes answering that question requires recognising that other people aren't simply an audience.
They're human beings.
With experiences.
Insecurities.
Relationships.
Problems.
And lives that continue long after we've finished enjoying our little moment of entertainment.
There's a difference between having an audience and deserving one
I write provocative material.
I deliberately challenge ideas.
I occasionally say things that make people uncomfortable.
And I don't believe that's inherently a problem.
Some conversations need to be uncomfortable.
Some assumptions need to be challenged.
Some behaviour deserves to be called out.
But there's a distinction I try to maintain.
I want to provoke thought.
Not simply provoke a reaction.
And I think that distinction is becoming increasingly important.
Because it would be remarkably easy to measure the value of everything I publish according to how many people like it.
How many share it.
How many comment.
How many follow.
But that would be a rather shallow assessment of whether the work achieved anything worthwhile.
A post can receive thousands of reactions and change absolutely nothing.
Another can reach fifty people and genuinely alter how somebody thinks about their life.
Which one was more valuable?
That depends entirely on what you're trying to achieve.
And perhaps that's the problem with treating engagement as the ultimate measure of success.
It tells us something about the response.
It doesn't necessarily tell us anything about the value.
The same principle applies to human behaviour.
You can make an entire room laugh and still have behaved appallingly.
You can receive universal applause and still have been wrong.
And you can be the only person in a room willing to challenge something and still be the person demonstrating the greatest integrity.
The crowd is not a moral authority.
It's a collection of people responding to something.
Sometimes thoughtfully.
Sometimes emotionally.
Sometimes without much consideration at all.
And I think we've become far too comfortable treating its response as a verdict.
The most important reaction might be the one we never see
There's a final thought I keep returning to.
Imagine someone making a particularly cruel remark about another person.
Everybody laughs.
The person responsible enjoys their moment.
Perhaps it gets recorded.
Perhaps it gets shared.
Perhaps it receives five hundred likes.
And perhaps the person being mocked goes home feeling absolutely fucking awful.
They don't publish a response.
They don't start an argument.
They don't demand an apology.
They simply carry the experience with them.
Nobody watching the original interaction knows.
Nobody celebrating the clip knows.
The algorithm certainly doesn't know.
And the person responsible might never discover it.
So when we measure the success of the interaction through the visible response, we risk ignoring the consequence that mattered most.
The one experienced by the person whose dignity became the entertainment.
That's what I find so troubling about the increasing importance we place on public approval.
Not that people enjoy being appreciated.
Not that funny content attracts an audience.
Not that social media rewards things people find entertaining.
But that we've created an environment where the applause can become so loud that it drowns out almost everything else.
Including the possibility that somebody has been hurt.
And when that happens, I think we need to question what we're actually rewarding.
Because getting people to laugh isn't difficult if you're prepared to say absolutely anything.
Getting people to react isn't particularly impressive if you're willing to exploit somebody else's embarrassment.
And gaining approval from strangers doesn't automatically make your behaviour defensible.
Sometimes it simply means you've found people who share your lack of consideration.
I don't think we need a new set of complicated rules governing what everybody can and cannot joke about.
I don't think we need to sanitise comedy.
And I don't think we need to spend our lives terrified of offending people.
I think we need something considerably simpler.
The ability to recognise that other people have experiences beyond our own.
The judgement to understand that not everything funny is appropriate.
And the maturity to recognise that a positive reaction doesn't automatically justify what produced it.
Because the real test of how we treat somebody shouldn't be whether the audience approves.
It should be whether we can still defend our behaviour when the audience has gone.
Five hundred likes don't make you less of an arsehole.
They just make it easier to forget you were being one.
Independent research and sources
1. Brady, W. J., McLoughlin, K., Doan, T. N., & Crockett, M. J. (2021). How Social Learning Amplifies Moral Outrage Expression in Online Social Networks. Science Advances, 7(33), eabe5641.
Research analysing approximately 12.7 million tweets and conducting behavioural experiments to examine how social feedback and network norms influence subsequent expressions of moral outrage. Relevant to social reinforcement, although not direct evidence about offensive comedy or bullying.
https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.abe5641
2. Sherman, L. E., Payton, A. A., Hernandez, L. M., Greenfield, P. M., & Dapretto, M. (2016). The Power of the Like in Adolescence: Effects of Peer Influence on Neural and Behavioral Responses to Social Media. Psychological Science, 27(7), 1027–1035.
Experimental neuroimaging research examining how visible peer approval influences adolescents' responses to photographs, including images depicting risky behaviour.
https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797616645673
3. Bastiaensens, S., Vandebosch, H., Poels, K., Van Cleemput, K., DeSmet, A., & De Bourdeaudhuij, I. (2014). Cyberbullying on Social Network Sites: An Experimental Study into Bystanders' Behavioural Intentions to Help the Victim or Reinforce the Bully. Computers in Human Behavior, 31, 259–271.
Experimental research exploring how the identity and behaviour of other bystanders influence young people's intentions to help victims or reinforce bullying online.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2013.10.036
4. Walther, J. B. (first published online 2024). The Effects of Social Approval Signals on the Production of Online Hate: A Theoretical Explication. Human Communication Research.
A theoretical analysis proposing mechanisms through which social approval and disapproval may influence the production and propagation of hateful messages online. The proposed mechanisms should not be mistaken for conclusively established causal effects.
https://doi.org/10.1177/00936502241278944
5. Milli, S., Carroll, M., Wang, Y., Pandey, S., Zhao, S., & Dragan, A. D. (2025). Engagement, User Satisfaction, and the Amplification of Divisive Content on Social Media. PNAS Nexus, 4(3), pgaf062.
A preregistered algorithmic audit finding that engagement-driven ranking on Twitter amplified emotionally charged and politically hostile content, including material that users did not necessarily prefer.
https://doi.org/10.1093/pnasnexus/pgaf062
6. Meta (2026). Your Algorithm, Your Words: New Ways to Shape What You See on Facebook.
Meta's description of personalised recommendation systems, engagement signals and new options for influencing the content displayed in Facebook feeds and Reels.
https://about.fb.com/news/2026/10/introducing-your-algorithm-facebook/
Research gaps and questions for further investigation
Approval and behavioural repetition: Further experimental and longitudinal research is required to establish how social approval for humiliating or disparaging content influences the creator's subsequent behaviour, independently of pre-existing attitudes and personality.
Audience reinforcement: Research should distinguish between laughter, likes, shares, encouraging comments and other forms of audience participation, examining whether these signals reinforce bullying or cruelty differently.
Victim impact: More evidence is needed to understand the relationship between visible public approval of humiliation, perceived social isolation and the cumulative psychological consequences for those targeted.
Offline transfer: Existing research does not conclusively establish whether reinforcement of provocative online behaviour produces measurable changes in everyday face-to-face interactions or social judgement.
Adolescent development: Further longitudinal research is needed into how children and adolescents interpret public approval for aggressive humour, including differences associated with maturity, empathy, peer relationships and parental guidance.
Commercial incentives: Independent investigation should examine how engagement-driven recommendations affect the visibility and repetition of humiliation-based entertainment compared with constructive, cooperative or less emotionally provocative content.
The central argument—that visible social approval can reinforce behaviour which would otherwise be socially challenged—is informed by established research into social learning and online interaction. Its proposed contribution to broader changes in everyday hostility remains a hypothesis requiring further investigation.