Comment by areoform

An interesting sociological tendence that I've noticed after talking to large-ish to medium-ish streamers is that haters fixate. And the greater that level of hate and fixation, the more successful that person seems to be.

Of course, there is a critical threshold to this phenomenon - a hater singularity, if you will - after which the hate becomes negative, but before and up to that point, the hate just fuels the metrics.

Is there a historical equivalent to this fixation? People have watched trials and followed the stories of serial killers with revulsion and fixation pre-social media & live streaming, but that fixation seems more muted (in retrospect) than today's trend.

It's striking just how much negative emotions drive the "attention economy"