Participating on the Internet is actually fun!
I’m new to blogging, so I was a little shocked to see one of my recent posts about eggs appear on the Trending page of the Discovery feed.
Not only that, but I got a handful of wonderful email replies from people all over the world sharing their experiences with eggs for breakfast. One of them even turned it into his own post and made it on the Trending page too!
One thing I’ve learned from this experience is the benefits of friction in online communication. If it’s costless to interact, there is no bar for quality or intention.
Take a look at the comments section on any social media site. What you see:
- Best case (small percentage): someone leaves a thoughtful comment.
- Usually: it’s one sentence or a few words.
- At worst (often): Trolls, dunks, spam, and nonsense.
One approach to combatting these behaviors is charging $$ to interact. Many writers on Substack paywall their comments section. Some big accounts on X actually paywall their replies as well.
While it’s effective, it feels against the spirit of the Internet to charge a toll on participation.
But there’s good news. Turns out you don’t have to charge money. You just have to make people fight through a little bit of friction.
One example: A well-known public intellectual was asked how he was able to get protesters to stop showing up at his talks and disrupting his events. He chuckled and said he simply shifted to hosting his events in the morning. His protesters weren’t willing to endure the small cost of just waking up early to disrupt his talks!
It’s the same on the Internet. With no comments section, any reader has to take a couple extra steps to participate. They had to open their email client, enter my address, write a note, and send it to me privately.
The results are terrific. I’ve received only thoughtful, friendly correspondence with no performance and no malicious intent.