If you scrolled on social media for just an hour, it is possible you could see the same joke, trend or niche reaction image a multitude of times.
With a video, comment or post popping up just seconds later, you probably already forgot it.
But the message is stuck, floating around in your brain – especially the more times that you saw it.
The 5 to 1 ratio
Relationship psychologist John Gottman discovered that, in human relationships, for every negative experience, five positive experiences must occur to undo the negative perception of the other party.
This rule can be applied to romantic relationships, friendships, workplace relationships and cross-cultural interactions.
Since in many people’s day-to-day lives they are only interacting with people of similar cultural backgrounds, media like books, articles, films, shows, blogs and vlogs have become imperative to learning more about people with cultural backgrounds we rarely interact with.
For example, someone living in a small town city in midwestern America with low immigration and tourist populations will rarely interact with people of non-midwestern cultural backgrounds. Or, someone living outside of major tourist destinations in China can likely go a whole day only seeing other Chinese people.
This is why diversity in media is important.
It heavily effects of stereotypes and perceptions of outside groups created or built in our minds.
When minstrel shows began in New York in the 1830s, not long after they were present throughout the country. These blackface productions meant to imitate enslaved Africans perpetuated many negative stereotypes. Since these shows started in the north, where slavery had been abolished and there had never been wide spread planation culture like in the south, this became how northerners saw Africans that were enslaved on southern plantations.
These stereotypes were among those spread by slave owners as a justification for slavery and to portray Africans as inferior to Europeans.
These stereotypes were believed by Americans long after the performances ended, and many still believe Black people are lazier, more sexual, engage in more thievery and are less intelligent than those of other racial backgrounds.
Stereotypes across social media
With internet videos and comments on platforms where a lot of content can be consumed in a short amount of time, such as Instagram Reels or TikTok, people can fall down rabbit holes of stereotypes.
At first, when you see a video of a Black person getting caught stealing and someone comments, “typical,” you might wonder why they would make a racist comment. The same goes for videos blaming Jewish people for economic issues or labeling Arabs as terrorists.
But over time, people become immune to recognizing blatant racism. Especially with internet jargon or symbols popping up every few scrolls. Also, it does not just stop at not recognizing racism, but also at not recognizing and believing racist stereotypes.
When, under every video about a negative economic situation, you see a Star of David emoji, you might eventually believe that Jewish people control the economy. Or, if under a video of a girl saying a racial slur or stereotype and the comments all consist of men spamming GIFs about bringing in love, you might start to view slurs as a normal thing for people you interact with to say.
None of these stereotypes is true or okay to say.
Social media, particularly content targeting young men, is promoting alt-right views, Nazi propaganda and extreme racism.
Artificial intelligence is also being used by many bigoted people to create racist videos to convince people that racist stereotypes are accurate and gather attention and viewership. These videos might depict Black people acting rudely, ungrateful or angry, and Jewish people hoarding money. There are many other videos arising depicting other stereotypes, and towards a myriad of other groups.
Then the algorithm, seeing that you watched the video to completion, or interacted with the video or comment section under it, provides you with more and more similar videos, until you start to see the portrayals and stereotypes as “a truth,” affecting how you interact with real people both online and in person.
If we follow the 5 to 1 ratio, these videos account for way more than one negative experience, meaning hundreds of positive experiences must be made up in hopes of rewiring your perceptions, which, if you live isolated from those of diverse cultural backgrounds, is simply not going to happen.
If diversity and accurate representation were prominent across your social media feed, these rabbit holes and negative belief systems would be less common.
Not to mention, there are conditions to these positive cross-cultural experiences, found by intercultural communication scholars, that must occur to actually be effective.
One example of this is while interacting with someone in an outside group, an individual must see them as a “typical” member of the group. Otherwise, their brain will reason that the positive experience was due to them being “different.”
For example, if a non-Muslim interacts with a Muslim who doesn’t act in a way that fits their preconceived stereotypes, they will only accept that maybe the stereotypes are not true if they view the person as looking like a “typical” Muslim when they first approached them.
What can you do
Negativity and hate gather more interactions and are more profitable, meaning this extremist content will be an ongoing issue for the time being. Additionally, the more people who get sucked into believing these stereotypes, the more people there will be to spread them. They might not be even doing it for viewership or profit; it might just be a casual comment that they make without thinking, or they might see themselves as missionary for bigoted rhetoric.
The best way to stop falling down bigoted internet rabbit holes is to stop the fast-paced, mindless scrolling. Think about, analyze and question all of the videos that you are watching. (This will also help prevent you from falling down rabbit holes of undisclosed ads and “ai-slop/brain rot” videos.)
If you notice something you are watching or reading is promoting harmful beliefs or stereotypes, you can click “not interested” or even report it. Moreover, you can follow or watch lifestyle videos from content creators from different countries or cultural backgrounds from yours.
Better yet, you can put down the phone and read a magazine, book or watch a film. There is more availability of better cross-cultural representation and educational messaging in all of these media sources.