#100hardtruths

#33: speed matters; there is safety in the slow

Today’s internet seeks, supports, and succeeds via virality. The pursuit of virality for media content on the web is understood as a truism and a good, as self-evidently powerful, as the natural pursuit of the habitat.

“Viral marketing depends on a high pass-along rate from person to person. If a large percentage of recipients forward something to a large number of friends, the overall growth snowballs very quickly. If the pass-along numbers get too low, the overall growth quickly fizzles.” marketingterms.com

Of course, virality is also a pre-condition for fake news. When ideas move fast—in their production, reception, or pass-along—we give up the time necessary for research, verification, contemplation, and action.
Given the internet’s fundamentally unhealthy imbrication of views, brand, market and celebrity, we must demand and produce sustaining environments that counter acceleration.

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To see a poetic response to this hardtruth:

for we understood their suffering, didn’t we?

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