Thoughts on Engagement Farming

A thoughtful professor whose work I admire posted something on Facebook this week that’s really made me think:

I’m trying to help people understand just how lucrative it is to be outrageous on social media. It doesn’t matter if you are truthful or not—just outrageous enough to go viral. I have over 90,000 followers on X. Yet, X says I’m not eligible to be a paid content creator because I don’t get millions of views with my posts. I could if I wanted to, of course. (Anyone can.) But no thanks. I will take quiet truth instead.

*Here’s the real point though: when you post “outrageous” things from questionable sources, you are just putting money in someone’s pocket who may or may not have truth in mind.

She went on to explain that she’s going to begin unfriending and unfollowing people who share content from known engagement farmers because she doesn’t want to support it.

The broader conversation was like a writing prompt for my overactive brain.

I’ve often thought (and even expressed) similar sentiments. If I wanted to fast track my way to fame and fortune as a conservative Christian blogger, for example, all I would really need to do is to loudly denounce feminism and blame it for most of the world's evils, pretend like Donald Trump hung the moon, and lecture people about how public school and Taylor Swift will turn their kids into communists. It would also help if I dropped about 75 pounds, got Botox, fillers, and a boob job, and dyed my hair blonde. I obviously have no intention of doing any of this because my motivation is truth telling and integrity, not fortune or fame.

And I agree with the professor in her underlying point that so much of engagement farming is a net negative. I don’t want to be subconsciously contributing to a culture that rewards people for exploiting and capitalizing off of human humiliation or distress. These viral videos of teen girls getting their faces bashed in during school fights, for example? They generate millions upon millions of views, and all I can think when I encounter them is how horrified and embarrassed my own daughter would be to find herself featured in such a video. Sharing them does not make the world a better place. In fact, it inspires other maladjusted teens to stage violent altercations of their own in hopes that they, too, may get Instafamous. Engagement farming on social media is like the Gen Z version of Jerry Springer, and with enough of it, people will become desensitized and addicted to shockvertising and crisis entertainment.

So I sort of agree with her overarching point.

That said, I do think there is at least some legitimate place for sharing outrageous viral content, especially if it exposes truth the mainstream media will otherwise suppress. The motivation here should obviously be to rouse people from their collective apathy, not just to titillate them or build your brand, and the lines are not always crystal clear here.

LibsofTikTok would be an excellent example of this. We’re talking about a Twitter account with an excess of 3 million followers, and it’s run by a pretty ballsy woman named Chaya. I often disagree with her approach to people. I’ve never liked or respected the whole “own the libs” type of thinking that seeks to humiliate or embarrass ideological opponents. I think Chaya can be downright mean-spirited in the way she treats people, and I’m pretty sure she and I would never be best friends in the real world. So there’s a part of me that doesn’t necessarily want to support her work by sharing her content.

At the same time, the woman is exposing legitimate horrors that no one else will touch with a ten foot pole, and I find myself grateful that at least SOMEONE with that kind of influence has the courage to use it to shine a light on rot that needs to be addressed.

This morning Chaya shared a video that a pornsick trans-identified school teacher had shared to his own public TikTok channel, wherein he bragged about one of his students commenting on his synthetic hormone induced “B cups.” He seemed indignant that more of his students had not also noticed his non-existent breasts. There was no hint of self-awareness of how grotesquely inappropriate it is to discuss one’s breasts in any professional context, let alone in the presence of children.

The video was truly shocking. If a pastor or priest had posted such a video on social media, I have no doubt it would have been heavily featured in The New York Times with a strict warning against religious predators. But the leftist media won’t go near a story like this, which is exactly what emboldens so many creeps like this guy to do whatever the hell they want in broad daylight at the expense of the masses. Wouldn’t you want to know if YOUR child’s teacher was facilitating conversations with your kids about his fetish?

Enter engagement farmers like Chaya, who, ethical issues and all, has done a great deal more to protect kids from this kind of garbage than most of progressive Christian academia will ever dream of doing. I shared the video without compunction and with the full knowledge that doing so might land me squarely in the category of the unfollowed or unfriended among people who look down their noses at this type of content.

It’s not “quiet truth,” and I’m okay with that. Because some truth needs to be loud. Some truth needs to shock. Some truth needs to outrage. Not for the adrenaline rush but for the sheer purpose of rallying people to necessary action. Facts may not care about our feelings, but by golly, if we want people to act, we had best figure out a way to help them feel something first. The fact that we, as a society, are actively sterilizing children SHOULD outrage us. That’s the only appropriate response. I think we need to aggressively resist the belief that being calm and cerebral means being at peace.

It’s hard to be a truth teller when your audience and influence are relatively small, especially when the truth that you carry is born of an urgent desire to protect people from harm. I’ve worked nearly my entire adult life in communications and media relations, and I promise you I’ve never had such a hard time getting a simple press release published as I did when I worked on a campaign opposing gender cult legislation. No one would publish our warnings or our stories. But people like Chaya would, and when you’re fighting back against a media industrial complex, you start to become very grateful for the support.

One of my friends is a reporter who’s been working tirelessly for over eight years to expose the gender industry’s assault on children. As a leading subject matter expert, he’s been interviewed by The New York Times three separate times. Not a single one of those interviews led to the publication of even one word of his insight. Truth that can save is virtually blacklisted by every institution with tangible power to effect change. It’s why we have lifelong leftists platforming with The Heritage Foundation and publishing their pieces in The Federalist.

All the heavy hitting institutions are captured by the left. On the right, we have a few red states and a couple of churches. The left has billions at its disposal. Conservative Christians get by on scraps by comparison. Compare the ACLU budget to ADF’s. It’s not even a close fight at all, but The New York Times will tear into the ADF as though it’s the biggest threat to democracy ever. The trans lobby has luxurious privilege. Their fundamental assumptions are catered to by every major institution as though they are God’s honest truth. They have hegemonic control over everything and refuse to countenance anything we say no matter how articulate we are. We are David. They are Goliath. But they portray themselves as the marginalized. Everything is such a manipulative reversal. It’s just so frustrating to see Christian elites just kiss up to that as though they are standing up to the powerful when they are the powerful.

And some of them have columns in The New York Times and sway with the mighty, but they refuse to use that power or influence to tear down strongholds that evangelicals rightly name. Why? Have they just convinced themselves it’s scaremongering if there are evangelicals behind it? Is silence in the face of evil really more righteous than disquieting, outrageous, uncomfortable truth telling? I don’t think it is.

For good or ill, social media is a great equalizer, bringing accountability to the previously untouchable and forcing the hand of the MSM to respond to things we can observe with our own eyes rather than burying the truths we’d rather not see.

I really do wish we had more sophisticated messengers over here in my pocket of activism. But we don’t. So in the meantime, I’m not going to feel all that guilty about a little outrage marketing. There’s a time to quietly pray for change, and there’s a time to allow prayer to mobilize you to strike the gong and cause a ruckus. Whilst children are butchered in the name of progress, you’ll find me in the latter camp.

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