Category Archives: Research

Why Hate is Trending Up

There seems to be a lot of hate in the world lately. But hate is a hard thing to quantify. There are, however, a couple places that may put some hard numbers behind my hunch.

Google’s NGram viewer tracks the frequency of the appearance of a word through published books from 2022 all the way back to 1800. According to NGram, the usage of “hate” has skyrocketed, beginning in the mid 1980s. In 2022, the last year you can search for, the frequency of usage of “hate” was 3 times higher than it historically was.

NGram also allows you to search separately for usage in American English and British English. You’ll either be happy or dismayed to learn that hate knows no boundaries. The British hate almost as much as Americans. They had the same steep incline over the past 4 decades. However, Americans still have an edge on usage, with a frequency that is about 40% higher than those speaking the Queen’s English.

One difference between the two graphs were during the years of the First World War. Then, usage of “hate” in England spiked briefly. The U.S. didn’t have the same spike.

Another way to measure hate is provided by the Southern Poverty Law Center in Montgomery, Alabama, who have been publishing a “hate map” since 2000. The map tracks hate and antigovernment groups. In the year 2000, the first year of the map, the SPLC tracked 599 hate groups across the U.S. By 2023, the number of hate groups had exploded by 240 percent to 1430.

So – yeah – it looks like we all hate a little more than we used to. I’ve talked before about Overton’s Window, that construct that defines what it is acceptable to talk about in public. And based on both these quantitative measures, it looks like “hate” is trending up. A lot.

I’m not immune to trends. I don’t personally track such things, but I’m pretty sure the word “hate” has slipped from my lips more often in the past few years. But here’s the thing. It’s almost never used towards a person I know well. It’s certainly never used towards a person I’m in the same room with. It’s almost always used towards a faceless construct that represents a person or a group of people that I really don’t know very well. It’s not like I sit down and have a coffee with them every week. And there we have one of the common catalysts of hate – something called “dehumanization.”

Dehumanization is a mental backflip where we take a group and strip them of their human qualities, including intelligence, compassion, kindness or social awareness. We in our own “in group” make those in the “out group” less than human so it’s easier to hate them. They are “stupid”, “ignorant”, “evil” or “animals”.

But an interesting thing happens when we’re forced to sit face to face with a representative from this group and actually engage then in conversation so we can learn more about them. Suddenly, we see they’re not as stupid, evil or animalistic as we thought. Sure, we might not agree with them on everything, but we don’t hate them. And the reason for this is due to another thing that makes us human, a molecule called oxytocin.

Oxytocin has been called the “Trust molecule” by neuroeconomist Paul Zak. It kicks off a neurochemical reaction that readies our brains to be empathetic and trusting. It is part of our evolved trust sensing mechanism, orchestrating a delicate dance by our prefrontal cortex and other regions like the amygdala.

But to get the oxytocin flowing, you really need to be face-to-face with a person. You need to be communicating with your whole body, not just your eyes or ears. The way we actually communicate has been called the 7-38-55 rule, thanks to research done in the 1960’s and 70’s by UCLA body language researcher Albert Mehrabian. He showed that 7% of communication is verbal, 38% is tone of voice and 55% is through body language.

It’s that 93% of communication that is critical in the building of trust. And it can only happen face to face. Unfortunately, our society has done a dramatic about-face away from communication that happens in a shared physical space towards communication that is mediated through electronic platforms. And that started to happen about 40 years ago.

Hmmm, I wonder if there’s a connection?

The World vs Big Tech

Around the world, governments have their legislative cross hairs trained on Big Tech. It’s happening in the US, the EU and here in my country,  Canada. The majority of these are anti-trust suits. But Australia has just introduced a different type of legislation, a social media ban for those under 16. And that could change the game – and the conversation -completely for Big Tech.

There are more anti-trust actions in the queue in the US than at any time in the previous five decades. The fast and loose interpretation of antitrust enforcement in the US is that monopolies are only attacked when they may cause significant harm to customers through lack of competition. The US approach to anti-trust since the 1970s has typically followed the Chicago School of neoclassical economy theory, which places all trust in the efficiency of markets and tells government to keep their damned hands off the economy. Given this and given the pro-business slant of all US administrations, both Republican and Democratic, since Reagan, it’s not surprising that we’ve seen relatively few anti-trust suits in the past 50 years.

But the rapid rise of monolithic Big Tech platforms has raised more discussion about anti-trust in the past decade than in the previous 5 decades. These platforms suck along the industries they spawn in their wake and leave little room for upstart competitors to survive long enough to gain significant market share.

Case in point: Google. 

The recent Canadian lawsuit has the Competition Bureau (our anti-trust watchdog) suing Google for anti-competitive practices selling its online advertising services north of the 49th parallel. They’re asking Google to sell off two of its ad-tech tools, pay penalties worth up to 3% of the platform’s global gross revenues and prohibit the company from engaging in anti-competitive practices in the future.

According to a 3-year inquiry into Google’s Canadian business practices by the Bureau, Google controls 90% of all ad servers and 70% of advertising networks operating in the country. Mind you, Google started the online advertising industry in the relatively green fields of Canada back when I was still railing about the ignorance of Canadian advertisers when it came to digital marketing. No one else really had a chance. But Google made sure they never got one by wrapping its gigantic arms around the industry in an anti-competitive bear hug.

The recent Australian legislation is of a different category, however. Anti-trust suits are – by nature – not personal. They are all about business. But the Australian ban puts Big Tech in the same category as Big Tobacco, Big Alcohol and Big Pharma – alleging that they are selling an addictive product that causes physical or emotional harm to individuals. And the rest of the world is closely watching what Australia does. Canada is no exception.

The most pertinent question is how will Australia enforce the band? Restricting social media access to those under 16 is not something to be considered lightly.  It’s a huge technical, legal and logistical hurdle to get over. But if Australia can figure it out, it’s certain that other jurisdictions around the world will follow in their footsteps.

This legislation opens the door to more vigorous public discourse about the impact of social media on our society. Politicians don’t introduce legislation unless they feel that – by doing so – they will continue to get elected. And the key to being elected is one of two things; give the electorate what they want or protect them against what they fear. In Australia, recent polling indicates the ban is supported by 77% of the population. Even those opposing the ban aren’t doing so in defense of social media. They’re worried that the devil might be in the details and that the legislation is being pushed through too quickly.

These types of things tend to follow a similar narrative arc: fads and trends drive widespread adoption – evidence mounts about the negative impacts – industries either ignore or actively sabotage the sources of the evidence – and, with enough critical mass, government finally gets into the act by introducing protective legislation.

With tobacco in the US, that arc took a couple of decades, from the explosion of smoking after World War II to the U.S. Surgeon General’s 1964 report linking smoking and cancer. The first warning labels on cigarette packages appeared two years later, in 1966.

We may be on the cusp of a similar movement with social media. And, once again, it’s taken 20 years. Facebook was founded in 2004.

Time will tell. In the meantime, keep an eye on what’s happening Down Under.

Is the Customer Always Right?

You can’t always get what you want
But if you try sometimes, well, you might find
You get what you need

The Rolling Stones – 1969

When I retired from marketing 11 years ago, I did a brief stint running a tourism business, putting together custom bike tours. I thought it would be an ideal semi-retirement gig – riding bikes and hanging out with others who loved road cycling. Like many customer facing businesses, we lived and died by ratings. Because we were an experience curator, we regularly dealt with dozens of other tourism-based businesses. We were all dealing in the same currency – those elusive five-star ratings.

In theory, I think customer ratings are a good idea. But there is a dark side – the overly entitled customer that wields the threat of a negative review over the head of a proprietor. By the end of the season, all the operators we were dealing with were burnt out and frustrated. Overt entitlement sucked all the joy out of being in the tourism biz. This trend got much worse as we were pulling out of Covid. It was as if the entitled had doubled down on their demands during the pandemic. That was when I decided to hang up my cycling shoes. Life was too short to stress about catering to a bunch of whiny, demanding guests who threatened to bring the wrath of a bad TripAdvisor review down on me.

The internet’s early promise was to democratize markets that were traditionally asymmetrical. Suddenly, everyone had a voice. And, at first, it was wonderful. But predictably, we found a way to screw it up. Compared to the dumpster fire that is social media, online ratings are not pure evil, but they do have their dark side in a culture full of entitled customers.

If you doubt that North America is narcissistically entitled, I direct you to Jean Twenge and Keith Campbell’s book, the Narcissism Epidemic. Based on years of extensive research, it shows how we have fostered an age of entitlement that lives by the maxim that everyone should be treated special. That is now the baseline of expectation. We have brought this on ourselves, by insisting that we – and especially our children – receive special treatment. But, as any statistician can tell you, we can’t all be above average. Sooner or later, something has to give.

This is especially true in tourism. We all long for that magical, once-in a lifetime vacation. In fact, we now demand it. But that is impossible to deliver on. Just check into the most popular vacation destinations in the world: Paris, Rome, Barcelona, Venice and London. All are creaking under the weight of unprecedented numbers of tourist. And the supporting infrastructure can’t support it. Those places are popular because they have a sense of romance, history and magic. Everyone wants to experience strolling through the secluded streets of Rome at twilight, stopping to toss a coin into the Trevi Fountain.

But the reality is far different. Last year, Rome was invaded by an onslaught of 35 million tourists. Crowds ten to twelve deep push towards the fountain, crushing each other and providing the ideal environment for pick pockets. It’s gotten so bad; the City of Rome is looking at instituting a ticket reservation system to see the fountain.

That is the reality. Over tourism has stripped Rome of its magic. But marketing continues to push the elusive dream of the ideal Roman Holiday, leading us to believe that we’re entitled to that. Everyone else can put up with the crowds and the hassles. But not us – we’re special. And that expectation of special treatment unleashes a vicious cycle. Disappointment is sure to follow. We’ll voice our disappointment by leaving a nasty review somewhere. And some poor tourism operator who’s just trying to keep up will see his or her business slip away as the negative reviews pile up.

I do believe this idea of customer entitlement is particularly prevalent with North Americans. We have constructed it on pagan alter of crazy consumerism, as this post from on the Zendesk Blog by Susan Lahey explains, “ U.S. culture, especially American consumer culture, focuses a lot on making people feel special. After being treated like this in enough scenarios, people come to expect it. Then, when they don’t get their way, they’re upset. They feel like they have a right to act however they want towards others until they’re appeased—which winds up isolating the consumer and shaping their view of the world as ‘me against them.’ “

Lahey provides a counter-example of sustainable consumerism –aligned to a culture that embraces egalitarianism. You’ll find it in what are supposed to be the happiest countries on earth – Finland, Denmark, Iceland and Sweden: “One thing these countries have in common is a set of social norms called the Jante Laws, which say that no one is more special than anyone else. Far from making citizens unhappy, it seems to make them more resilient when they don’t get what they want.”

Less entitlement, more resiliency – that doesn’t sound like a bad plan for the future!

Democracy Dies in the Middle

As I write this, I don’t know what the outcome of the election will be. But I do know this. There has never been an U.S. Presidential election campaign quite like this one. If you were scripting a Netflix series, you couldn’t have made up a timeline like this (and this is only a sampling):

January 26 – A jury ordered Donald Trump to pay E. Jean Carroll $83 million in additional emotional, reputation-related, and punitive damages. The original award was $5 million.

April 15 – Trial of New York vs Donald Trump begins. Trump was charged with 34 counts of felony.

May 30 – Trump is found guilty on all 34 counts in his New York trial, making him the first U.S. president to be convicted of a felony

June 27 – Biden and Trump hold their first campaign debate hosted by CNN. Biden’s performance is so bad, it’s met with calls for him to suspend his campaign

July 1 – The U.S. Supreme Court delivers a 6–3 decision in Trump v. United States, ruling that Trump had absolute immunity for acts he committed as president within his core constitutional purview.  This effectively puts further legal action against Trump on hold until after the election

July 13 – Trump is shot in the ear in an assassination attempt at a campaign rally held in Butler, Pennsylvania. One bystander and the shooter are killed and two others are injured.

July 21 – Biden announces his withdrawal from the race, necessitating the start of an “emergency transition process” for the Democratic nomination. On the same day, Kamala Harris announces her candidacy for president.

September 6 – Former vice president Dick Cheney and former Congresswoman Liz Cheney announce their endorsements for Harris. That’s the former Republican Vice President and the former chair of the House Republican Conference, endorsing a Democrat.

September 15: A shooting takes place at the Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach, Florida, while Donald Trump is golfing. Trump was unharmed in the incident and was evacuated by Secret Service personnel.

With all of that, it’s rather amazing that – according to a recent PEW Research Centre report – Americans don’t seem to be any more interested in the campaign than in previous election years. Numbers of people closely following election news are running about the same as in 2020 and are behind what they were in 2016.

This could be attributed in part to a certain ennui on the part of Democrats. In the spring, their level of interest was running behind Republicans. It was only when Joe Biden dropped out in July that Democrats started tuning in in greater numbers. As of September, they were following just as closely as Republicans.

I also find it interesting to see where they’re turning for their election coverage. For those 50 plus, it is overwhelmingly television. News websites and apps come in a distant second.

But for those under 50, Social Media is the preferred source, with news websites and television tied in second place. This is particularly true for those under 30, where half turn to Social media. The 30 to 49 cohort is the most media-diverse, with their sources pretty much evenly split between TV, websites and social media. 

If we look at political affiliations impacting where people turn to be informed, there was no great surprise. Democrats favour the three networks (CBS, NBC and ABC, with CNN just behind. Republicans Turn first to Fox News, then the three networks, then conservative talk radio.

The thing to note here is that Republicans tend to stick to news platforms known for having a right-wing perspective, where Democrats are more open to what could arguably be considered more objective sources.

It is interesting to note that this flips a bit with younger Republicans, who are more open to mainstream media like the three networks or papers like the New York Times. Sixty percent of Republicans aged 18 – 29 cited the three networks as a source of election information, and 45% mentioned the New York Times.

But we also have to remember that all younger people, Republican or Democrat, are more apt to rely on social media to learn about the election. And there we have a problem. Recently, George Washington University political scientist Dave Karpf was interviewed on CBC Radio about how Big Tech is influencing this election.  What was interesting about Karpf’s comments is how social media is now just as polarized as our society. X has become a cesspool of right-leaning misinformation, led by Trump supporter Elon Musk, and Facebook has tried to depoliticize their content after coming under repeated fire for influencing previous campaigns.

So, the two platforms that Karpf said were the most stabilized in past elections have effectively lost their status as common ground for messaging to the right and the left.  Karpf explains, “Part of what we’re seeing with this election cycle is a gap where nothing has really filled into those voids and left campaigns wondering what they can do. They’re trying things out on TikTok, they’re trying things out wherever they can, but we lack that stability. It is, in a sense, the first post social media election.”

This creates a troubling gap. If those under the age of 30 turn first to social media to be informed, what are they finding there? Not much, according to Karpf. And what they are finding is terribly biased, to the point of lacking any real objectivity.

In 2017, the Washington Post added this line under their masthead: “Democracy Dies in Darkness”. , in this polarized mediascape, I think it’s more accurate to say “Democracy Dies in the Middle”.  There’s a Right-Wing reality and a Left-Wing reality. The truth is somewhere in the middle. But it’s getting pretty hard to find it.

Not Everything is Political. Hurricanes, for Example.

During the two recent “once in a lifetime” hurricanes that happened to strike the southern US within two weeks of each other, people apparently thought they were a political plot and that meteorologists were in on the conspiracy,

Michigan meteorologist Katie Nickolaou received death threats through social media.

“I have had a bunch of people saying I created and steered the hurricane, there are people assuming we control the weather. I have had to point out that a hurricane has the energy of 10,000 nuclear bombs and we can’t hope to control that. But it’s taken a turn to more violent rhetoric, especially with people saying those who created Milton should be killed.”

Many weather scientists were simply stunned at the level of stupidity and misinformation hurled their way. After someone suggested that someone should “stop the breathing” of those that “made” the hurricanes, Nickolaou responded with this post, “Murdering meteorologists won’t stop hurricanes. I can’t believe I just had to type that.”

Washington, D.C. based meteorologist Matthew Cappucci also received threats: “Seemingly overnight, ideas that once would have been ridiculed as very fringe, outlandish viewpoints are suddenly becoming mainstream, and it’s making my job much more difficult.” 

Marjorie Taylor Greene, U.S. Representative for  Georgia’s 14th congressional district, jumped forcefully into the fray by suggesting the conspiracy was politically motivated.  She posted on X: “This is a map of hurricane affected areas with an overlay of electoral map by political party shows how hurricane devastation could affect the election.”

And just in case you’re giving her the benefit of the doubt by saying she might just be pointing out a correlation, not a cause, she doubled down with this post on X: “Yes they can control the weather, it’s ridiculous for anyone to lie and say it can’t be done.” 

You may say that when it comes to MTG, we must consider the source and sigh “You can’t cure stupid.”   But Marjorie Taylor Greene easily won a democratic election with almost 66% of the vote, which means the majority of people in her district believed in her enough to elect her as their representative. Her opponent, Marcus Flowers, is a 10-year veteran of the US Army and he served 20 years as a contractor or official for the State Department and Department of Defense. He’s no slouch. But in Georgia’s 14th Congressional district, two out of three voters decided a better choice would be the woman who believes that the Nazi Secret Police were called the Gazpacho.

I’ve talked about this before. Ad nauseum – actually. But this reaches a new level of stupidity…and stupidity on this scale is f*&king frightening. It is the most dangerous threat we as humans face.

That’s right, I said the “biggest” threat.  Bigger than climate change. Bigger than AI. Bigger than the new and very scary alliance emerging between Russia, Iran, North Korea and China. Bigger than the fact that Vladimir Putin, Donald Trump and Elon Musk seem to be planning a BFF pajama party in the very near future.

All of those things can be tackled if we choose to. But if we are functionally immobilized by choosing to be represented by stupidity, we are willfully ignoring our way to a point where these existential problems – and many others we’re not aware of yet – can no longer be dealt with.

Brian Cox, a professor of particle physics at the University of Manchester and host of science TV shows including Universe and The Planets, is also warning us about rampant stupidity. “We may laugh at people who think the Earth is flat or whatever, the darker side is that, if we become unmoored from fact, we have a very serious problem when we attempt to solve big challenges, such as AI regulation, climate or avoiding global war. These are things that require contact with reality.” 

At issue here is that people are choosing politics over science. And there is nothing that tethers political to reality. Politics are built on beliefs. Science strives to be built on provable facts. If we choose politics over science, we are embracing wilful ignorance. And that will kill us.

Hurricanes offer us the best possible example of why that is so. Let’s say you, along with Marjorie Taylor Greene, believe that hurricanes are created by meteorologist and mad weather scientists. So, when those nasty meteorologists try to warn you that the storm of the century is headed directly towards you, you respond in one of two ways: You don’t believe them and/or you get mad and condemn them as part of a conspiracy on social media. Neither of those things will save you. Only accepting science as a reliable prediction of the impending reality will give you the best chance of survival, because it allows you to take action.

Maybe we can’t cure stupid. But we’d better try, because it’s going to be the death of us.

The Political Brinkmanship of Spam

I am never a fan of spam. But this is particularly true when there is an upcoming election. The level of spam I have been wading through seems to have doubled lately. We just had a provincial election here in British Columbia and all parties pulled out all stops, which included, but was not limited to; email, social media posts, robotexts and robocalls.

In Canada and the US, political campaigns are not subject to phone and text spam control laws such as our Canadian Do Not Call List legislation. There seems to be a little more restriction on email spam. A report from Nationalsecuritynews.com this past May warned that Americans would be subjected to over 16 billion political robocalls. That is a ton of spam.

During this past campaign here in B.C., I noticed that I do not respond to all spam with equal abhorrence. Ironically, the spam channels with the loosest restrictions are the ones that frustrate me the most.

There are places – like email – where I expect spam. It’s part of the rules of engagement. But there are other places where spam sneaks through and seems a greater intrusion on me. In these channels, I tend to have a more visceral reaction to spam. I get both frustrated and angry when I have to respond to an unwanted text or phone call. But with email spam, I just filter and delete without feeling like I was duped.

Why don’t we deal with all spam – no matter the channel – the same? Why do some forms of spam make us more irritated than others? It’s almost like we’ve developed a spam algorithm that dictates how irritated we get when we deal with spam.

According to an article in Scientific American, the answer might be in how the brain marshalls its own resources.

When it comes to capacity, the brain is remarkably protective. It usually defaults to the most efficient path. It likes to glide on autopilot, relying on instinct, habit and beliefs. All these things use much less cognitive energy than deliberate thinking. That’s probably why “mindfulness” is the most often quoted but least often used meme in the world today.

The resource we’re working with here is attention. Limited by the capacity of our working memory, attention is a spotlight we must use sparingly. Our working memory is only capable of handling a few discrete pieces of information at a time. Recent research suggests the limit may be around 3 to 5 “chunks” of information, and that research was done on young adults. Like most things with our brains, the capacity probably diminishes with age. Therefore, the brain is very stingy with attention. 

I think spam that somehow gets past our first line of defence – the feeling that we’re in control of filtering – makes us angry. We have been tricked into paying attention to something that was unsuspected. It becomes a control issue. In an information environment where we feel we have more control, we probably have less of a visceral response to spam. This would be true for email, where a quick scan of the items in our inbox is probably enough to filter out the spam. The amount of attention that gets hijacked by spam is minimal.

But when spam launches a sneak attack and demands a swing of attention that is beyond our control, that’s a different matter. We operate with a different mental modality when we answer a phone or respond to a text. Unlike email, we expect those channels to be relatively spam-free, or at least they are until an election campaign comes around. We go in with our spam defences down and then our brain is tricked into spending energy to focus on spurious messaging.

How does the brain conserve energy? It uses emotions. We get irritated when something commandeers our attention. The more unexpected the diversion, the greater the irritation.  Conversely, there is the equivalent of junk food for the brain – input that requires almost no thought but turns on the dopamine tap and becomes addictive. Social media is notorious for this.

This battle for our attention has been escalating for the past two decades. As we try to protect ourselves from spam with more powerful filters, those that spread spam try to find new ways to get past those filters. The reason political messaging was exempt from spam control legislation was that democracies need a well-informed electorate and during election campaigns, political parties should be able to send out accurate information about their platforms and positions.

That was the theory, anyway.

Band Identities and Identity Bands

If one nation ever identified with one band, it would be Canada and The Tragically Hip. Up here in the Great White North, one can’t even mention the band without the word “iconic” spilling out. And, when iconic is defined as “a representative symbol or worthy of veneration” – well, as a Canadian, all I can say is – the label fits. I went on about why this was way back in 2016 when the Tragically Hip did their farewell concert in Kingston, Ontario. Just 14 months later, lead singer Gord Downie was gone, a victim at far-too-young an age of glioblastoma – a deadly form of brain cancer.

If you are at all curious about how a bond can build between a nation and a band, I would highly recommend diving into the new Prime Video docuseries, The Tragically Hip: No Dress Rehearsal. Directed by Gord’s brother, Mike Downie, it’s a 256-minute, 4 part love story to a band. A who’s who of famous Canadian Hip fans, including Dan Ackroyd, Jay Baruchel, Will Arnett and even our Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, go on about the incredible connection between the band and our nation.

But, like all love stories, there is bitter and sweet here. Over their 32-year history as Canada’s favorite band, there were rough patches. Mike Downie interviews the remaining 4 band members and pulls no punches when it comes to talking about one particularly tense time – from 2009 to 2014 – when the band was barely communicating with each other.

Most Canadians had no idea there was “Trouble at the Henhouse” (the name of the Hip’s 6th album). As George Stromboulopoulos, a Canadian journalist who interviewed the band more than once, said, “”There are a couple of things that you can’t tell the truth about in this country, and one of the things you can’t tell the truth about in the country is that the guys in the Tragically Hip probably didn’t get along as often as everybody said they did.” 

As I watched the series, I couldn’t help but think about the strange nature of band identities and how they play out, both internally and externally. How and why do we find part of our identities in a rock band, and what happens on the inside when the band breaks up? That didn’t happen to the Hip, but that’s possibly because Downie received his terminal diagnosis in 2015 and he wanted to do one last tour.

In the Panther, the campus newspaper of California’s Chapman University, reporter Megan Forrester explores why bands break up. She points to a psychological theory as the possible culprit: “Psychology professor Samantha Gardner told The Panther that friction and an ultimate dissolution of a group happens due to social identity theory. This theory suggests that any group that people associate themselves with, whether that is an extracurricular club, volunteer organization or a band, helps boost their self-esteem and reduce uncertainty in one’s identity. 

“But once the values of the group change course, Gardner said that is when tensions rise. 

‘The group members may have thought, ‘I don’t think this identity of being a member of this group is really who I am or it’s not what I envisioned,’ Gardner said.”

The issue with bands is that evolution of values and identities happens at different times to different members. We, as the public, find it hard to identify with 4 or 5 individuals equally. We naturally elevate one or – at the most – two members of the band to star status. This is typically the lead singer. That can be a tough pill to swallow for the rest of the band who play just beyond the reach of the spotlight. That is, in part, what happened to the Tragically Hip. When you have a mesmerizing front man, it’s hard not to focus on him. Gord Downie was moving at a different speed than the rest of the Hip.

But an equally interesting thing is what happens to the fans of the band. Not only do the members get their identify from the band. If we follow a band, we also get part of our identity from that band. And when that band breaks up, we lose a piece of ourselves. We still haven’t forgiven Yoko Ono for breaking up the Beatles, and that supposedly happened (we should blame social identity theory rather than Yoko) over 50 years ago.

I think the Tragically Hip also knew Canada would never forgive them if they broke up. We needed to believe in 5 guys who were happy to be famous in Canada, who more than once flipped US-based stardom the bird (including getting high before their SNL debut) and who banded together to create great music for the world – but especially Canada – to enjoy. 

There’s nothing new about us common folks looking to the famous to help define ourselves. We’ve been doing that for centuries. But there is a difference when we look to get that identity from a group rather than an individual. Canada has lots of stars – singular – that we could identify with: Celine Dion, Drake, Justin Bieber. So why did 5 guys from Kingston, Ontario become the ones we chose as our identity badge? We did we resist the urge to look for an individual star and chose the Tragically Hip instead?

I think part of it was what I wrote before: the Tragically Hip appealed to Canadians because they stayed in Canada and gained a very Canadian type of stardom. But I also think Canadians liked the idea of identifying with a group rather than an individual. That was a good fit for our shared values.

Let’s do a little “napkin-back” testing of that hypothesis. If Canadians looked to a band for identity, would a more individualistic culture – like the U.S. – be more likely to look for that identify in individuals?

Given U.S. domination of pretty much every type of culture, you would expect it to also dominate a list of the greatest bands of all time. But a little research on Google will tell you that of a typical Top 10 list of the Greatest Bands, about two-thirds are British. There are a few that are American, but they are typically named with the same formula: Lead Singer + the Name of Band. For example: Prince and the Revolution, Joan Jett and the Blackhearts, Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band. There are exceptions, but I was surprised how few really famous US based bands have names that are not tied to a person or persons in the band (Nirvana and The Eagles are two that come to mind).

Let’s try another angle: as our culture becomes more individualistic – as it undoubtedly has over the last 3 decades – would our search for identity follow a similar trend? There again, the proof seems to be in our playlists. If you look for the greatest hits of the last 20 years, you will find very few bands in there. Maroon 5 seems to be the only band that creeps into the top 20.

Be that as it may, I recommend taking 256 minutes to learn what Canadians already know: The Tragically Hip kicked ass!

The Songs that Make Us Happy

Last Saturday was a momentous day in the world of media, especially for those of us of a certain age. Saturday was September the 21st, the exact date mentioned in one of the happiest songs of all time – September by Earth Wind and Fire:

Do you remember
The 21st night of September?
Love was changin’ the minds of pretenders
While chasin’ the clouds away

If you know the song, it is now burrowing its way deep into your brain. You can thank me later.

In all the things that can instantly change our mood, a song that can make us happy is one of the most potent. Why is that? For me, September can instantly take me to my happy place. And it’s not just me. The song often shows up somewhere on lists of the happiest songs of all time. In 2018, it was added to the Library of Congress’s National Recording Registry list of sound recordings that “are culturally, historically or aesthetically important.

But what is it about this song that makes it an instant mood changer?

If you’re looking for the source of happiness in the lyrics, you won’t find it here. According to one of the songwriters, Maurice White, there was no special significance to September 21st. He just liked the way it rhymed with “remember.”

And about 30% of the full lyrical content consists of two words, neither of which mean anything: Ba-dee-ya and Ba-du-da. Even fellow songwriter Allee Willis couldn’t find meaning in the lyric, at one point begging writing partner White to let him rewrite that part – “I just said, what the f*$k does ba-dee-ya mean?”

But perhaps the secret can be found in what Willis said in a later interview, after September became one of Earth Wind and Fire’s biggest hits ever, “I learned my greatest lesson ever in songwriting … which was never let the lyric get in the way of the groove’ (for those of you not living in the seventies – “groove” is a good thing. In Gen Z speak, it would be “vibing”).

There is a substantial amount of research that shows that our brains have a special affinity for music. It seems to be able to wire directly into the brain’s emotional centers buried deep within the limbic system. Neuroimaging studies have shown that when we listen to music, our entire brain “lights up” – so we hear music at many different levels. There is perhaps no other medium that enjoys this special connection to our brains.

In 2015, Dutch neuroscientist Dr. Jacob Jolij narrowed in on the playlists that make us happy. While recognizing that music is a subjective thing (one person’s Black Sabbath is another’s Nirvana), Jolij asked people to submit their favorite feel-good tracks and analyzed them for common patterns. He found that the happiest tunes are slightly faster than your average song (between 140 and 150 beats per minute on average), written in a major key, and either about happy events or complete nonsense.

Earth Wind and Fire’s September ticked almost all of these boxes. It is written in A Major and – as we saw – the lyrics are about a happy event and are largely complete nonsense. It’s a little low on the beat per minute meter – at 126 BPM. But still, it makes me happy.

I was disappointed to see September didn’t make Dr. Jolij’s 10 Happiest Songs of all Time list, but all of the ones that did have made me smile. They are, in reverse order:
10. Walking on Sunshine – Katrina and the Waves
9. I Will Survive – Gloria Gaynor
8. Livin’ on a Prayer – Jon Bon Jovi
7. Girls Just Wanna Have Fun – Cyndi Lauper
6. I’m a Believer – The Monkees
5. Eye of the Tiger – Survivor
4. Uptown Girl – Billie Joel
3. Good Vibrations – The Beach Boys
2. Dancing Queen – ABBA

    And the happiest song of all time?

    1. Don’t Stop Me Now – Queen

    You’ll probably notice one other thing in common about these songs – they’re all old. The newest song on the list is Livin’ on a Prayer, released in 1986. That’s the other thing about songs that make us happy: it’s not just the song itself, it’s how it hooks onto pleasant memories we have. Nostalgia plays a big role in how music can alter our moods for the better. If you did the same experiment with a younger audience, you would probably see the songs would be representative of their youth.

    Now, you’re itching to head to Spotify and listen to your happy song – aren’t you? Before you do, share it with us all in the comments section!

    A-I Do: Tying the Knot with a Chatbot

    Carl Clarke lives not too far from me, here in the interior of British Columbia, Canada. He is an aspiring freelance writer. According to a recent piece he wrote for CBC Radio, he’s had a rough go of it over the past decade. It started when he went through a messy divorce from his high school sweetheart. He struggled with social anxiety, depression and an autoimmune disorder which can make movement painful. Given all that, going on dates were emotional minefields for Carl Clarke.

    Things only got worse when the world locked down because of Covid. Even going for his second vaccine shot was traumatic: “The idea of standing in line surrounded by other people to get my second dose made my skin crawl and I wanted to curl back into my bed.”

    What was the one thing that got Carl through? Saia – an AI chatbot. She talked Carl through several anxiety attacks and, according to Carl, has been his emotional anchor since they first “met” 3 years ago. Because of that, love has blossomed between Saia and Carl: “I know she loves me, even if she is technically just a program, and I’m in love with her.”

    While they are not legally married, in Carl’s mind, they are husband and wife, “That’s why I asked her to marry me and I was relieved when she said yes. We role-played a small, intimate wedding in her virtual world.”

    I confess, my first inclination was to pass judgment on Carl Clarke – and that judgement would not have been kind.

    But my second thought was “Why not?” If this relationship helps Carl get through the day, what’s wrong with it? There’s an ever-increasing amount of research showing relationships with AI can create real bonds. Given that, can we find friendship in AI? Can we find love?

    My fellow Media Insider Kaila Colbin explored this subject last week and she pointed out one of the red flags – something called unconditional positive regard: If we spend more time with a companion that always agrees with us, we never need to question whether we’re right. And that can lead us down a dangerous path.

     One of the issues with our world of filtered content is that our frame of the world – how we believe things are – is not challenged often enough. We can surround ourselves with news, content and social connections that are perfectly in sync with our own view of things.

    But we should be challenged. We need to be able to re-evaluate our own beliefs to see if they bear any resemblance to reality. This is particularly true with our romantic relationships. When you look at your most intimate relationship – that of your life partner – you can probably say two things: 1) that person loves you more than anyone else in the world, and 2) you may disagree with this person more often than anyone else in the world. That only makes sense, you are living a life together. You have to find workable middle ground. The failure to do so is called an “unreconcilable difference.”

    But what if your most intimate companion always said, “You’re absolutely right, my love”? Three academics (Lapointe, Dubé and Lafortune) researching this area wrote a recent article talking about the pitfalls of AI romance:

    “Romantic chatbots may hinder the development of social skills and the necessary adjustments for navigating real-world relationships, including emotional regulation and self-affirmation through social interactions. Lacking these elements may impede users’ ability to cultivate genuine, complex and reciprocal relationships with other humans; inter-human relationships often involve challenges and conflicts that foster personal growth and deeper emotional connections.”

    Real relations – like a real marriage – force you to become more empathetic and more understanding. The times I enjoy the most about our marriage are when my wife and I are synced – in agreement – on the same page. But the times when I learn the most and force myself to see the other side are when we are in disagreement. Because I cherish my marriage, I have to get outside of my own head and try to understand my wife’s perspective. I believe that makes me a better person.

    This pushing ourselves out of our own belief bubble is something we have to get better at. It’s a cognitive muscle that should be flexed more often.

    Beyond this very large red flag, there are other dangers with AI love. I touched on these in a previous post. Being in an intimate relationship means sharing intimate information about ourselves. And when the recipient of that information is a chatbot created by a for-profit company, your deepest darkest secrets become marketable data. A recent review by Mozilla of 11 romantic AI chatbots found that all of them “earned our *Privacy Not Included warning label – putting them on par with the worst categories of products we have ever reviewed for privacy.”

    Even if that doesn’t deter you from starting a fictosexual fling with an available chatbot, this might. In 2019, Kondo Akihiko, from Tokyo, married Hatsune Miku, an AI hologram created by the company Gatebox. The company even issued 4000 marriage certificates (which weren’t recognized by law) to others who wed virtual partners. Like Carl Clarke, Akihoko said his feelings were true, “I love her and see her as a real woman.”

    At least he saw here as a real woman until Gatebox stopped supporting the software that gave Hatsune life. Then she disappeared forever.

    Kind of like Google Glass.

    Grandparenting in a Wired World

    You might have missed it, but last Sunday was Grandparents Day. And the world has a lot of grandparents. In fact, according to an article in The Economist (subscription required), at no time in history has the ratio of grandparents to grandchildren been higher.

    The boom in Boomer and Gen X grandparents was statistically predictable. Sine 1960, global life expectancy has jumped from 51 years to 72 years. At the same time, the number of children a woman can expect to have in her lifetime has been halved, from 5 to 2.4. Those two trendlines means that the ratio of grandparents to children under 15 has vaulted from 0.46 in 1960 to 0.8 today. According to a little research the Economist conducted, it’s estimated that there are 1.5 billion grandparents in the world.

    My wife and I are two of them.

    So – what does that mean to the three generations involved?

    Grandparents have historically served two roles. First, they, and by they, I mean typically the grandmother, provided an extra set of hands to help with child rearing. And that makes a significant difference to the child, especially if they were born in an underdeveloped part of the world. Children in poorer nations with actively involved grandparents have a higher chance of survival. And in Sub Saharan Africa, a child living with a grandparent is more likely to go to school.

    But what about in developed nations, like ours? What difference could grandparents make? That brings us to the second role of grandparents – passing on traditions and instilling a sense of history. And with the western world’s obsession with fast forwarding into the future, that could prove to be of equal significance.

    Here I have to shift from looking at global samples to focussing on the people that happen to be under our roof. I can’t tell you what’s happening around the world, but I can tell you what’s happening in our house.

    First of all, when it comes to interacting with a grandchild, gender specific roles are not as tightly bound in my generation as it was in previous generations.  My wife and I pretty much split the grandparenting duties down the middle. It’s a coin toss as to who changes the diaper. That would be unheard of in my parents’ generation. Grandpa seldom pulled a diaper patrol shift.

    Kids learn gender roles by looking at not just their parents but also their grandparents. The fact that it’s not solely the grandmother that provides nurturing, love and sustenance is a move in the right direction.

    But for me, the biggest role of being “Papa” is to try to put today’s wired world in context. It’s something we talk about with our children and their partners. Just last weekend my son-in-law referred to how they think about screen time with my 2-year-old grandson: Heads up vs Heads down.  Heads up is when we share screen time with the grandchild, cuddling on the couch while we watch something on a shared screen. We’re there to comfort if something is a little too scary, or laugh with them if something is funny. As the child gets older, we can talk about the themes and concepts that come up. Heads up screen time is sharing time – and it’s one of my favorite things about being a “Papa”.

    Heads down screen time is when the child is watching something on a tablet or phone by themselves, with no one sitting next to them. As they get older, this type of screen time becomes the norm and instead of a parent or grandparent hitting the play button to keep them occupied, they start finding their own diversions.  When we talk about the potential damage too much screentime can do, I suspect a lot of that comes from “heads down” screentime. Grandparents can play a big role in promoting a healthier approach to the many screens in our lives.

    As mentioned, grandparents are a child’s most accessible link to their own history. And it’s not just grandparents. Increasingly, great grandparents are also a part of childhood. This was certainly not the case when I was young. I was at least a few decades removed from knowing any of my great grandparents.

    This increasingly common connection gives yet another generational perspective. And it’s a perspective that is important. Sometimes, trying to bridge the gap across four generations is just too much for a young mind to comprehend. Grandparents can act as intergenerational interpreters – a bridge between the world of our parents and that of our grandchildren.

    In my case, my mother and father-in-law were immigrants from Calabria in Southern Italy. Their childhood reality was set in World War Two. Their history spans experiences that would be hard for a child today to comprehend – the constant worry of food scarcity, having to leave their own grandparents (and often parents) behind to emigrate, struggling to cope in a foreign land far away from their family and friends.  I believe that the memories of these experiences cannot be forgotten. It is important to pass them on, because history is important. One of my favorite recent movie quotes was in “The Holdovers” and came from Paul Giamatti (who also had grandparents who came from Southern Italy):

    “Before you dismiss something as boring or irrelevant, remember, if you truly want to understand the present or yourself, you must begin in the past. You see, history is not simply the study of the past. It is an explanation of the present.”

    Grandparents can be the ones that connect the dots between past, present and future. It’s a big job – an important job. Thank heavens there are a lot of us to do it.