“Un”popular Hot Take

Look at your Medium front page. Or Facebook stories. Or Twitter. Or YouTube. Or even a “serious”, traditional newspaper. How many “unpopular hot takes” do you see? Headlines that are so “controversial” or downright outrageous that they make you angry, or anxious, or filled with contempt enough to click on them? I bet with you there is at least one.

Unpopular hot takes are, despite their name, outrageously popular. Of course they are: the more outrageous the claim, the more clicks it gets: from supporters to leave a fist bump, but even more so, from opponents to write a scathing commentary. Everyone is in it for the clicks — above all, the algorithms that serve you the articles. The more clicks, views and comments something gets, the more “interesting” it is deemed by the algorithm, the higher its chance to end up on a front page — of your Twitter feed, YouTube, and, yes, Medium.

The algorithms, and the posters, are polarizing and dividing, but you, dear reader, is what makes them work. It is almost as if you want to be polarized. Maybe it is the cabin-fever, the inaction of being locked up in your home, the feeling of helplessness in the face of a pandemic that leaves you wanting to do something, anything. You want to be angry at something. At the left. At the right. At injustice. At “justice warriors”. At the middle who doesn’t want to participate in the brawl.