I’ve seen it happen enough now that I can read the signs of the sky. “Red sky at morning,” or something like that.
I’m referring to the development of a full-blown social media hurricane, with an organization or a person lying directly in the middle of the storm’s path. Helen Andrews reflects on the phenomenon as a “shame storm,” an apt metaphor. When a typhoon is heading your way, there’s virtually nothing you can do to prevent it, stop it, or blunt its force. The most you can do is cling to whatever piece of plywood you can and brace for impact, hoping something will be left standing when the maelstrom is over.
Storms pop up on more than one platform, but the warm tropical air of Twitter seems most conducive to their formation. My friend Chris Martin says someone is the main character every day on Twitter; the point of the game is to not be it. Unfortunately, for organizations and people with influence who do the increasingly dangerous work of thinking out loud and in public, everyone is vulnerable to criticism that cascades into canceling. Within hours or days, scattered showers can become a hurricane. Here’s how it happens.
Storm Starters
It starts with scattered showers and thunderstorms.
Any reputable organization is going to get rain. Doing something of substance will attract a fair share of criticism. My former boss Eric Geiger used to say, “You can’t have buzz without noise.” Others talk about how big ships leave a big wake. Leadership books tell us, “Criticism is the cost of influence.” This goes with the territory. Say something, expect disagreement. If you’re doing something of value, expect to have arrows shot in your direction; just be strategic about which arrows you want to take, and try to avoid unforced errors.
Showers and thunderstorms can be a good thing, helping people and organizations clarify their thinking. No one gets it right all the time. Good-faith critics perform a valuable service. But Tim Urban distinguishes between criticism culture (going after an idea) and cancel culture (going after the person). In criticism culture, the point is to subject bad ideas to rigorous debate as we all seek truth together. In cancel culture, the point is to punish and excommunicate the person who holds the bad ideas so the unclean presence is expelled.
“Storm starters” are convinced a particular person or organization is so wrong or harmful as to deserve online condemnation. They’ve moved beyond critique to cancellation. The best way to chip away at the credibility of the target is to start or intensify online thunderstorms, hoping the tempest will spill out of the teapot.
Tropical Depression Phase
Over time, if enough scattered critiques converge into a narrative (promoted by the storm starters), a tropical depression will develop—a bigger storm encompassing smaller storms. Stormy weather indicates trouble, to the point some outside observers begin to wonder, If there’s smoke, there must be fire.
Most organizations and influential people face tropical depressions on a regular basis. This is when the scattered criticisms (some true, some false) are numerous enough to form a coherent narrative that diminishes the organization or person’s credibility. Even good-faith critics begin to ask questions, wondering if some of the storm starters have a point. The chorus of concern grows louder and more frequent.
Wise leaders will surround themselves with trusted friends who act as “storm spotters” to give them perspective on controversies and help them discern whether an organization is facing a squall or if the storm’s intensity is bigger, thus requiring a different response. Without such perspective, it’s easy to respond in ways out of proportion to the size of the storm. In the tropical depression phase, sometimes the organization or person in question will act differently, perhaps by adjusting decisions to alleviate the concerns of good-faith critics or by pushing back publicly against the false narratives propounded by bad-faith critics.
Institutions and individuals are vulnerable to the beatdown of rain in a tropical depression. Australian church leader Mark Sayers points to the work of Edwin Friedman, who noticed how institutions play an important social role by absorbing anxiety. In a world with healthy, well-functioning institutions, there’s a built-in respect for individuals and institutions committed to passing on wisdom, conquering challenges, and centralizing important knowledge. But in our world today, many institutions are unhealthy, many more have been devalued, and some have disappeared. Widespread cultural anxiety is the result, and the flood of anxiety sweeps everyone into tribes.
“Decentralization leads to atomization, in which the individual is cut loose from traditional sources of relationship and identity, finding meaning only in the ‘atom’ of self. The atomization created by decentralization creates a new tribalization.” (84)
These are the atmospheric conditions for the slow-moving tropical depression that plagues institutions and individuals. The tribal impulse then leads to the next phase of the storm.
Tropical Storm Phase
Usually, something triggers the jump to a tropical storm. It may be a particular video, article, statement, controversial association, or a past position—whatever it is, the revelation seems to legitimize the concerns of critics in the tropical depression phase. The event becomes a topic of conversation, pressuring people who have ties to the person or the organization but haven’t felt any of the earlier depression’s effects to choose sides or to make clear their position.
The tropical storm’s growth is commensurate to its ability to draw other circles of influencers into its orbit. If you can tap into the energy that comes from a different online tribe or ecosystem, and if you can draw that energy into the storm, then the pressure on the organization or person gets ramped up considerably. Peer pressure begins to do its work.
The online tribe or the people in an adjacent ecosystem feel a moral obligation to join in the criticism (and may begin calling for cancellation) as a way of echoing the concerns of previous critics. The more tribes triggered, the bigger the storm becomes, to the point even good-faith actors, who may not be able to distinguish genuine problems from online manipulation or the dynamics of social media, are swept into the vortex.
Hurricane Phase
Once several storms become a megastorm, the tempest is no longer contained to the teapot of one or two social media platforms. The hurricane itself becomes the story, and the pressure increases exponentially for the organization or person in the direct line of the hurricane’s landfall.
By this time, people or organizations close to the direct hit begin to feel massive pressure. Friends flee the path of the hurricane by distancing themselves from the people or organizations in the eye of the storm. Or worse, they think the only way to survive is to become part of the storm, to add energy to the tempest to escape being a target of the hurricane’s fury.
This is when storm chasers show up. Just like bad weather is a ratings bonanza for cable news networks, an online hurricane provides an opportunity for people to weigh in with hot takes, podcast conversations, TikTok rants, and YouTube shows—breathlessly covering the controversy and raising their own profiles in the process. Social media platforms benefit from the buzz, with algorithms pointing more people to the pseudo-event. Storm chasers piggyback on the trending storm to build their brands. Others find the whole thing strangely compelling, watching the disaster unfold from the comfort of their smartphones before scrolling to some other spectacle.
During the hurricane, the storm’s intensity will include vitriolic personal attacks and the dehumanization of the storm’s target. It’s not that the person or entity in question is merely mistaken; they’re monstrous, irredeemably immoral, even disgusting. The viciousness of the hurricane undermines good-faith criticism and can sabotage any efforts at making reforms.
Hurricane intensity is assessed by wind speeds, and at least initially, it’s the wind that does the most damage. Online, most hurricanes make landfall and lose steam rather quickly. It’s the pressure from the wind, or the storm surge, that leaves people or organizations weaker than they were before, especially when the gales cause everyone in the path to bend to keep from breaking.
Human Nature and Online Storms
Social media dynamics are new in human history, but human nature is old. There’s much to learn from thinkers who watch and account for human behavior, from philosophers like René Girard and observers like Jonathan Haidt. Growing in our understanding of how these storm dynamics work is one way of approaching our use of social media with wisdom. It’s good to be aware of how the atmospheric dynamics of social media (we could call it “online climate change”!) lead to unusual behaviors—to canceling instead of critiquing, for example—because everyone acts differently when the barometric pressure changes and the storm is upon us.
Awareness, however, will not stop or prevent the hurricane. Over the years, I’ve been inside multiple organizations or close to people who have experienced online storms. I’ve never been in the direct path of a hurricane (probably only a tropical depression), but I assume if I continue to write and think out loud, my day is coming, whether it be next week or next year.
Prepare for the Next Storm
No matter when or where the next hurricane barrels through, I’m sure of this: we can decrease the intensity of these storms if (1) we resist being drawn into an online vortex full of perverse incentives and distorted dynamics, (2) we recognize “storm chasing” when it happens, and (3) people and organizations in the eye simply let the storm do its worst and then look to glean lessons and wisdom in the aftermath.
To the first point, I go back to Mark Sayers’s description of leadership as “a non-anxious presence.” Relying on Friedman, he writes,
“The fundamental principle was to remain present within the unhealthy environment while enduring the sabotage, backlash, and undermining that leaders inevitably face when trying to act as non-anxious presences in anxious social systems. As the leader faces this backlash, the great danger is that anxiety will rise within them, enveloping them and making them part of the problem rather than the solution. The leader would then have what Friedman labeled as a ‘Failure of Nerve.’ Therefore, leaders who wish to be a non-anxious presence must keep their nerve and push through the backlash, sabotage, betrayal from friends and colleagues, criticism, and emotional pain, and keep growing toward the higher vision in a non-anxious way.” (101)
To the second point, we should get better at seeing through opportunists who chase storms as a way of building their own brands and platforms. Keep your eyes open for the pattern, and you’ll see it (on all points of the spectrum) whenever there’s a storm.
To the third point, self-critique is good. But it’s rarely helpful to try it in the middle of the storm. The needed self-reflection should be part of the cleanup; that’s when we’re most likely to take away the appropriate lessons. It’s only after the storm—once the sun has returned and there’s a pleasant breeze instead of gale-force winds—that the weather is better suited for back-and-forth critique and good-faith disagreement, where we vigorously debate ideas instead of cancel people.
Storms require the presence of certain atmospheric conditions before they can expand from one level to the next. We can’t change the course or trajectory of storms on our own, but we can weaken their intensity and destruction if we grow in online wisdom regarding their development, if we choose instead to embody a non-anxious presence in a world of swirling anger and anxiety.
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