{"id":40027,"date":"2026-07-24T22:17:29","date_gmt":"2026-07-25T03:17:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/?p=40027"},"modified":"2026-07-24T22:22:28","modified_gmt":"2026-07-25T03:22:28","slug":"the-applause-i-crave-has-become-the-applause-im-afraid-to-trust","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/?p=40027","title":{"rendered":"The applause I crave has become the applause I\u2019m afraid to trust"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

There are some things about myself that I\u2019d rather not realize. This is one of them.<\/p>\n

Facebook recently started sending me regular \u201creport cards\u201d about my posting performance.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019ve recently been posting less often,\u201d it said<\/a>. \u201cCreate new content to catch up.\u201d<\/p>\n

Catch up to what?<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t work for Facebook. Nobody is paying me to keep its users entertained. I have no obligation to feed its endless appetite for photos, videos, jokes, observations or essays. Yet the notification implied that posting regularly was somehow my responsibility \u2014 and it gently encouraged me to get back to work.<\/p>\n

The message irritated me.<\/p>\n

At first, I thought I knew why. Like most people, I don\u2019t enjoy software telling me how to behave. The platform wants more content because more content keeps people scrolling, which benefits Meta. That much is obvious.<\/p>\n

But after thinking about it for a while, I realized that wasn\u2019t the real reason the notification bothered me.<\/p>\n

The real reason was that it touched a nerve I didn\u2019t want to acknowledge. I\u2019ve become an unpaid sharecropper on the social media plantation \u2014 and I\u2019ve let myself be brainwashed to crave the attention that the platforms promise me.<\/p>\n

For years, I\u2019ve told myself that I use Facebook and Instagram because they help me promote my work. That\u2019s certainly part of the story. When I write an essay that matters to me or take a photo I\u2019m proud of, I\u2019d like the people who might appreciate it to see it. Social media seems like the easiest way to reach them.<\/p>\n

But if I\u2019m being completely honest with myself, that explanation has become less convincing over time.<\/p>\n

The strange thing is that I no longer post primarily to promote my essays. Most of what I post isn\u2019t links to my work at all.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a picture of one of my cats.<\/p>\n

A cartoon.<\/p>\n

A joke.<\/p>\n

A sunset.<\/p>\n

Some passing thought that amused me.<\/p>\n

Short political observations.<\/p>\n

There are days when I find myself thinking I ought to post something even though I have nothing important to say.<\/em><\/p>\n

That should have been my first clue.<\/p>\n

About 15 years ago, I had one extraordinary day that I still remember vividly. My website was brand new. I was getting a few hundred visitors a day. Then I suddenly received more than 30,000 visitors in one day.<\/p>\n

It was exhilarating. I\u2019ve never forgotten how that felt.<\/p>\n

For a while afterward, I chased that feeling. I wrote about subjects that I knew would attract readers. I understood my audience, and I understood what they wanted from me. There was nothing dishonest about what I wrote, but I gradually realized I was choosing topics largely because I knew they would bring readers \u2014 and bring attention to me.<\/p>\n

Eventually, that stopped feeling worthwhile.<\/p>\n

I abandoned that approach years ago. Today, I write whatever I genuinely believe is worth saying, whether it attracts readers or not. Some essays perform reasonably well. Others disappear almost without notice. I no longer allow popularity to determine what I write.<\/p>\n

Or at least I thought I didn\u2019t.<\/p>\n

The Facebook notification made me question that assumption. If I had truly escaped the ego-driven need for applause, why did I still feel this persistent urge to keep posting?<\/p>\n

Not writing.<\/p>\n

Posting.<\/p>\n

Those aren\u2019t the same things.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s when I began thinking about B.F. Skinner.<\/p>\n

Skinner\u2019s experiments became famous because they demonstrated something surprisingly powerful about behavior. Animals didn\u2019t become the most persistent in their behavior when every press of a lever produced food. They became the most persistent when the reward appeared only occasionally and unpredictably.<\/p>\n

If the next press might produce food \u2014 but might not \u2014 they kept pressing.<\/p>\n

That simple observation eventually found its way into casinos. A slot machine doesn\u2019t promise that the next pull will produce a jackpot. There’s no direct cause-and-effect relationship. It merely keeps alive the possibility that it might.<\/p>\n

The uncertainty is the product. It produces the adrenaline. It keeps people pulling that lever.<\/p>\n

As soon as I thought about that, I recognized something uncomfortable in myself. I post a photo of one of my cats and two people react to it. The next photo receives fifty reactions, even though the two photos are equally good.<\/p>\n

A carefully written essay that required hours of thought often vanishes without anyone noticing, while a picture I almost didn\u2019t bother sharing unexpectedly attracts a great deal of attention.<\/p>\n

There is no pattern that I can identify.<\/p>\n

No formula I can repeat.<\/p>\n

No reliable lesson to learn.<\/p>\n

And that\u2019s exactly what keeps me posting.<\/p>\n

Maybe the next one will be the one people notice.<\/p>\n

Maybe the next essay will find its audience.<\/p>\n

Maybe the next photo will somehow escape whatever invisible decisions the algorithm is making today.<\/p>\n

The next press of the lever might produce a reward.<\/p>\n

I hate how familiar that sounds.<\/p>\n

The most unsettling part is that social media didn\u2019t create my desire for an audience. Long before Facebook existed, I wanted to write, speak, perform and communicate ideas. Someone I used to know called it \u201cthe applause factor\u201d in my life \u2014 and she wasn\u2019t wrong. I\u2019ve always wanted people to hear what I have to say.<\/p>\n

Social media simply found a way to measure what happens when I speak. Every post arrives with a scoreboard attached to it.<\/p>\n

Every photo or video.<\/p>\n

Every joke.<\/p>\n

Every essay.<\/p>\n

The numbers don\u2019t tell me whether the work was thoughtful or true or beautiful. They don\u2019t tell me whether one reader desperately needed to hear what I wrote. They simply report how much visible engagement the platform generated, then quietly invite me to try again.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s what Facebook\u2019s notifications are really doing. They aren’t merely asking me to post more. They’re reminding me that another reward might be waiting.<\/p>\n

One more photo.<\/p>\n

One more joke.<\/p>\n

One more observation.<\/p>\n

One more essay.<\/p>\n

The next one could be different.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t believe Mark Zuckerberg personally set out to turn millions of people into laboratory rats. That\u2019s almost beside the point. Systems built to maximize engagement inevitably discover what psychologists learned decades ago. Intermittent rewards change behavior because they keep hope alive.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s what finally bothered me about Facebook\u2019s message. It wasn\u2019t trying to create a habit. It was speaking to a habit that already existed.<\/p>\n

I have become fully trained \u2014 just like Skinner’s lab rats.<\/p>\n

As I was driving home Friday evening, I kept asking myself why I would have allowed myself to slowly start valuing the attention of random strangers, friends and acquaintances so much that I’ve unconsciously been performing like a trained seal to get it.<\/p>\n

And then something hit me that I should have realized before.<\/p>\n

Without realizing it, I’ve allowed myself to search for significance in the wrong place, not because I didn’t know better, but because a gamified system offered me a shortcut to the dopamine hits that we get from attention.<\/p>\n

Meaningful significance comes from our love relationships with people around us. Engaging with those people and those relationships requires more work. It asks for something more than posting a joke or a photo or a political thought. But the payoff goes far deeper.<\/p>\n

People feel significance from loving a spouse or a child or a friend or a neighbor. People feel significance from doing the hard work of making a spiritual connection with the divine.<\/p>\n

You don’t get significance from gaining a million followers on a social media platform. You don’t get significance from thousands of people laughing at your joke or loving the photo you posted.<\/p>\n

All you get from those is the momentary fiction that maybe people like you. It doesn’t mean that, but it can feel that way. And even that is very fleeting.<\/p>\n

I’ve quietly and unconsciously been looking to a shortcut to a feeling of significance that I haven’t earned \u2014 just as surely as people who engage in gambling are looking for a shortcut to getting unearned money.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t know what I\u2019ll ultimately do with that realization. I\u2019ve left social media before, only to return months later convinced that I needed it to reach readers. Perhaps I do. Perhaps I don\u2019t. I\u2019m honestly no longer certain.<\/p>\n

What I am certain of is that I now distrust one of my own motives in a way I never did before.<\/p>\n

When I reach for my phone to post something, I no longer know exactly why I\u2019m doing it. Am I sharing something because I genuinely think it\u2019s worth sharing? Or is it because, somewhere beneath my conscious intentions, I\u2019m hoping that this time, the machine will finally pay out?<\/p>\n

I never expected to recognize myself in B.F. Skinner\u2019s lab rats.<\/p>\n

Once I did, I couldn\u2019t unsee it. And it’s not a flattering realization.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There are some things about myself that I\u2019d rather not realize. This is one of them. Facebook recently started sending me regular \u201creport cards\u201d about my posting performance. \u201cYou\u2019ve recently been posting less often,\u201d it said. \u201cCreate new content to catch up.\u201d Catch up to what? I don\u2019t work for Facebook. Nobody is paying me Keep Reading<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-40027","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-uncategorized","entry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1x9iR-apB","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40027","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=40027"}],"version-history":[{"count":22,"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40027\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":40058,"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40027\/revisions\/40058"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=40027"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=40027"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=40027"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}