The Useful Idiot Syndrome

The use­ful idi­ot syn­drome amp­li­fies online hate.

In this blog post, you’ll get a deep­er insight into a strange social media phe­nomen­on that makes us all into use­ful idiots.

By point­ing fin­gers at a spe­cif­ic instance of bad beha­viour, we amp­li­fy the per­ceived momentum of that beha­viour instead. Even if the beha­viour nev­er actu­ally exis­ted in the first place.

Let’s dive right into it:

Like Flies on Dirt, We Gravitate Towards Conflict

I’ve cul­tiv­ated some­thing of an online pas­time for the last couple of years.

Whenever I see some­thing in the feed that I reck­on could be per­ceived as offens­ive to some ran­dom cul­tur­al iden­tity group, I head straight for the comments. 

While strangers arguing in the com­ment sec­tion might be enter­tain­ing, a strange com­mu­nic­at­ive phe­nomen­on often occurs:

For instance, in one of my social feeds, I might find a Gary Larson com­ic strip that depicts God in front of a bunch of anim­als while declar­ing, “Well, now I guess I’d bet­ter make some things to eat you guys.” ¹I love Gary Larson, so the scen­ario is entirely plaus­ible — the algorithms seem to have figured this out already.

Aha! A joke that points out one of many logic­al flaws of reli­gious texts. That ought to attract some reli­gious fun­da­ment­al­ists. “Lets’ see if some wacky cre­ation­ists are going to town in the com­ment sec­tion,” I sug­gest to myself.

Whenever I get the impulse to dive into a pub­lic com­ment sec­tion look­ing for people fight­ing each oth­er, I get two dis­tinct notions: 

One is the notion that this beha­viour prob­ably isn’t very productive.

And two is that I’m not the only one head­ing for the com­ment sec­tion to enjoy some expec­ted mayhem.

When “Good” Samaritans Are Crying Wolf

Whenever I dive into a com­ment sec­tion to enter­tain myself by enjoy­ing people stat­ing just how offen­ded they are, I’m typ­ic­ally able to find a few such com­ments. But rarely as many as I would’ve foreguessed. 

Sometimes, and not count­ing obvi­ous bot- or troll accounts, I have to scroll through hun­dreds of com­ments to find one com­menter who seems genu­inely offended.

In a sense, this could indic­ate some­thing pos­it­ive about social media. Maybe the pop­u­lar concept of “every­one on the inter­net is being offen­ded by everything on the inter­net” is acutely over­es­tim­ated and blown out of proportion.

Still, the com­ments made by people who have taken offence, how­ever many or few, don’t interest me here.

What truly interests me is that I’m find­ing droves of com­ments from two types of people:

1. Meta-Samaritans. The first group com­plains about those who are tak­ing offence. “People who are offen­ded by this con­tent have no right to be offen­ded,” they say. This group won’t hes­it­ate to express harsh opin­ions des­pite a com­plete lack of com­ments made by people being genu­inely offended.

2. Double-Meta Samaritans. The second group com­plains about those who com­plain about those tak­ing offence. And this group is typ­ic­ally just as nasty and hate­ful as the first group.

Now, we have an online fight on our hands. But for what reason?

Stirring Up Online Hate on a Cold Brew of Nothingness

Sure, some meta-samar­it­ans politely point out that tak­ing offence might be an over­re­ac­tion, but there’s typ­ic­ally an unpro­por­tion­ate amount of unwar­ran­ted ridicule, ad hom­inem — and plain hate.

And sure, some double-meta samar­it­ans are just politely point­ing out that tak­ing offence isn’t an over­re­ac­tion. Still, the amount of unwar­ran­ted ridicule, ad hom­inem, and plain hate is equally unjustified.

Is all this hate between hun­dreds or thou­sands of com­menters essen­tial when there are only a few com­ments (and some­times none) made by people genu­inely tak­ing offence?

I often find posts with hun­dreds of com­ments from angry mobs furi­ously fight­ing each oth­er over claims nev­er stated by any­one in the first place.

I’ve even seen numer­ous con­tent cre­at­ors being forced to pub­licly delete their con­tent and apo­lo­gise des­pite no evid­ence of any­one who took actu­al offence.

Why the Useful Idiot Syndrome is a Force Majeure

At face value, the help­ful idi­ot syn­drome seems intrins­ic to human nature. When we feel at odds with the world, we tend to overcompensate. 

Overcompensating sig­nalling vir­tues might res­ult from feel­ing that our mor­als are under attack. But instead of mak­ing the world bet­ter, we stir up more online hate instead of less.

And some might be act­ively seek­ing to pick a fight because it’s socially safe. The use­ful idi­ot syn­drome might be a psy­cho­lo­gic­al ver­sion of the Bandwagon Effect: 

A sig­ni­fic­ant per­cent­age of people who com­ment on posts made by people or organ­isa­tions they don’t know per­son­ally get triggered by merely see­ing a pos­i­tion that they believe is offens­ive to a cul­tur­al iden­tity group that they ste­reo­typ­ic­ally think of as overly sens­it­ive or mor­ally deplorable. 

Being triggered, double-meta samar­it­ans pree­mpt­ively rush to the com­ments to aggress­ively con­demn the expec­ted beha­viour of the iden­tity group — often without see­ing any actu­al reac­tions from oth­er people.

It could be non-Christians express­ing their hate against Creationists for not hav­ing any sense of humour, angry males attack­ing fem­in­ists for being venge­ful and mean, but it could be almost any­thing related to iden­tity politics.

Consequences of the Useful Idiot Syndrome

The use­ful idi­ot syn­drome, if it is a nat­ur­al phe­nomen­on, can have ser­i­ous con­sequences. It could be a social media post link­ing to a news story about the first per­son born in Africa to win a gold medal in a Scandinavian winter sport. While there might not be many accur­ate racist com­ments to be found, there might be hun­dreds and hun­dreds of words brim­ming with hate aimed at racist com­ments they have only ima­gined. Then, in the next news cycle, the story trans­forms into how the gold medal­ist’s accom­plish­ment res­ul­ted in racist attacks.

Aside from partly ruin­ing a tri­umphant moment for the ath­lete in the above scen­ario, a media situ­ation is man­u­fac­tured where, in this case, real-life racists might feel empowered by a dis­pro­por­tion­ate amount of atten­tion that sits way above their numer­al sig­ni­fic­ance in soci­ety. In con­junc­tion with the con­ver­sion the­ory, cul­tur­al groups could be pit­ted against each oth­er lit­er­ally while drenched in hatred — without accur­ately rep­res­ent­ing that hatred.

As this mor­al war anim­os­ity poten­tially sparks high­er engage­ment, it becomes a com­pel­ling pro­pos­i­tion for news organ­isa­tions and social media algorithms to favour news stor­ies that fuels this phenomenon.

Also, the use­ful idi­ot syn­drome might res­ult in fer­tile breed­ing grounds for tar­geted attacks per­pet­rated by destabil­ising interests using vari­ous destruct­ive social engin­eer­ing tactics.

There’s a risk that many of us, at least those act­ively com­ment­ing and enga­ging with people out­side our circles, are act­ing like accel­er­ants for polar­isa­tion — des­pite good inten­tions. By over­com­pens­at­ing to sig­nal our mor­al val­ues, we might act like use­ful idi­ots to those who don’t sup­port our side in the right­eous war.

Still, this is only an anec­dot­al obser­va­tion at this point. I can­not stress that enough. I could be wrong for many reas­ons, and we need aca­dem­ic stud­ies to determ­ine wheth­er or not this is an actu­al phe­nomen­on. The good news is that it should be a test­able hypo­thes­is, I believe. ²The vari­ous com­ment sec­tions I encounter aren’t ran­domly selec­ted since the algorithms choose them for me. I might rein­force a sys­tem­ic bias by enga­ging in a spe­cif­ic dis­cus­sion. Furthermore, I … Continue read­ing

Update: A few weeks after this post was pub­lished, an excit­ing event occurred in Sweden: The police issued a pub­lic warn­ing to Swedish par­ents to watch out for a spe­cif­ic TikTok chal­lenge where boys are encour­aged to assault females sexu­ally — and share the video on TikTok. ³For more con­text in Swedish and sound advice to par­ents, read Elza Dunkel’s blog post.

This then turned into a nation­al news item and a vivid social media dis­cus­sion, and many Swedish schools sent out a warn­ing to par­ents urging them to dis­cuss this mat­ter with their children.

Was there ever any such chal­lenge? If there was such a video chal­lenge, the use­ful idi­ot syn­drome only spawns oppor­tun­it­ies for people to post such chal­lenges to pro­voke fur­ther discussion. 

And as a res­ult, we scare young chil­dren using fake news and frame young boys as sexu­al pred­at­ors — actions that might be orches­trated by reac­tion­ary agen­das oper­at­ing in the shadows.

PR Resource: Amplification Hypothesis

PR Resource: Conversion Theory

The Conversion Theory: The Power of Minorities

The dis­pro­por­tion­al power of minor­it­ies is known as the con­ver­sion the­ory. ⁹Conversion the­ory of minor­ity influ­ence. (2021, February 12). In Wikipedia. https://​en​.wiki​pe​dia​.org/​w​i​k​i​/​C​o​n​v​e​r​s​i​o​n​_​t​h​e​o​r​y​_​o​f​_​m​i​n​o​r​i​t​y​_​i​n​f​l​u​e​nce

“In groups, the minor­ity can have a dis­pro­por­tion­ate effect, con­vert­ing many ‘major­ity’ mem­bers to their own cause. This is because many major­ity group mem­bers are not strong believ­ers in its cause. They may be simply going along because it seems easi­er or that there is no real altern­at­ive. They may also have become dis­il­lu­sioned with the group pur­pose, pro­cess, or lead­er­ship and are seek­ing a viable altern­at­ive.”
Source: Changingminds​.org ¹⁰Conversion Theory. (2023). Changingminds​.org. https://​chan​ging​minds​.org/​e​x​p​l​a​n​a​t​i​o​n​s​/​t​h​e​o​r​i​e​s​/​c​o​n​v​e​r​s​i​o​n​_​t​h​e​o​r​y​.​htm

How does it work?

The social cost of hold­ing a dif­fer­ent view than the major­ity is high. This increased cost explains why minor­it­ies often hold their opin­ions more firmly. It takes determ­in­a­tion to go against the norm. ¹¹Moscovici, S. (1980). Toward a the­ory of con­ver­sion beha­viour. In L. Berkowitz (Ed.), Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, 13, 209 – 239. New York: Academic Press

In con­trast, many major­ity mem­bers don’t hold their opin­ions so firmly. They might belong to the major­ity for no oth­er reas­on than that every­one else seems to be. ¹²Chryssochoou, X. and Volpato, C. (2004). Social Influence and the Power of Minorities: An Analysis of the Communist Manifesto, Social Justice Research, 17, 4, 357 – 388

According to con­ver­sion the­ory, while major­it­ies often claim norm­at­ive social influ­ence, minor­it­ies strive for eth­ic­al high ground. 

Given the power of norm­at­ive social influ­ence, minor­it­ies typ­ic­ally form tight-knit groups that can repeatedly com­mu­nic­ate the same core message.

Conversion Theory Examples

Most big shifts usu­ally start with a small group of ded­ic­ated people:

Minority Influence: A PR Approach

Organizations can cul­tiv­ate a sense of pur­pose and accom­plish­ment among par­ti­cipants by align­ing with a move­ment that chal­lenges a Stupid Majority.

Minority spokes­per­sons with sol­id con­vic­tions often pos­sess valu­able know­ledge and author­ity, enhan­cing their per­suas­ive abil­it­ies and influence.

Disproportionately, minor­it­ies can con­vert numer­ous major­ity mem­bers to their cause, as many in the major­ity may have merely fol­lowed the path of least res­ist­ance, made decisions without much con­sid­er­a­tion, or lacked viable alternatives.

Additionally, a sig­ni­fic­ant seg­ment of the major­ity might be dis­il­lu­sioned with their group’s pur­pose, pro­cess, or lead­er­ship, ren­der­ing them more recept­ive to altern­at­ive proposals.

But from a PR per­spect­ive, we must be cautious.

Minorities aren’t always right, and major­it­ies aren’t always wrong. Minorities can hold futile views while still exer­cising a dis­pro­por­tion­ate amount of power momentarily.

Learn more: Conversion Theory: The Disproportionate Influence of Minorities