I wish this was more common knowledge…
It’s called Clear’s Law of Recurrence because of the author James Clear.
It goes, an idea that gets repeated more, gets believed more. It doesn’t matter how good the idea is or if it makes sense.
In a lot of ways this seems like such an obvious, common sense thing. It’s kind of the reason people who think they uniquely see the truth all kind of use the same talking points. And yet we do stuff all the time like quote tweeting really bad takes just to argue with them.
First off, algorithms don’t really care that you’re dunking on the original post, they just see that it’s getting a lot of buzz and so maybe more people want to see it.
There’s a reason I follow you, and not that media personality or congressperson with the bad takes. I don’t want that on my feed.
To be nuanced, there’s a time and place to stand up to harmful rhetoric, but be careful that your instinct to react doesn’t play somebody else’s game for them.
Spend more of your energy getting the better idea out there, and figure out how to amplify it.