What passes for conversation online is not true dialogue but reactive performance. The systems we engage with encourage mimicry, emotional escalation, and shallow engagement over understanding — and this isn’t a failure of individuals, but a feature of the design.
Introduction: The Mirage of Connection
The internet was once imagined as a revolutionary space for dialogue and understanding. A place where geographic and social barriers could be flattened, where diverse voices might meet on equal footing, and where public discourse could thrive in ways previously impossible. It was supposed to be the great democratizer of communication.
But thirty years into the digital era, that promise rings hollow. Despite the sheer volume of communication happening online, meaningful conversation feels elusive. We scroll endlessly, respond instinctively, and watch debates unfold not as collaborative efforts to understand but as competitive performances.
What we call “conversation” online is often just a sequence of reactions. It mimics the form of dialogue — a post followed by a reply, a thread of exchanges — but lacks the substance: mutual engagement, context, care. This is the illusion of discourse.
From Dialogue to Reaction: A Systemic Drift
In theory, every online interaction could be a doorway to connection. In practice, most unfold like this: one user posts a thought. Another responds with disagreement or outrage. Others pile on. The original statement is quote-tweeted, dissected, turned into screenshots, and recontextualized by people who were never part of the initial exchange.
This is not conversation. It’s a feedback loop of reaction. And it’s not accidental.
The platforms we use are not neutral tools. They are systems engineered to maximize engagement. That means privileging content that sparks immediate emotion — particularly outrage, shock, or righteousness. Reflection and nuance take too long to generate clicks.
The result is an ecosystem in which brevity is rewarded, complexity is punished, and expression is increasingly performative. A slow, thoughtful exchange can’t compete with a viral tweet.
Real-Time Mimicry vs. Real Presence
Social media creates the illusion of presence. Notifications buzz in real-time. Replies show up within seconds. Comment sections refresh instantly. But presence is not just about timing. It’s about shared attention, a mutual willingness to engage and listen.
Online, that presence is shallow. Asynchronous communication feels immediate, but lacks the grounding of shared space and pacing. A comment left in good faith might be read hours later in a completely different tone. Sarcasm gets misread. Empathy gets flattened.
In this context, communication becomes a performance. We learn to speak not to understand or be understood, but to be seen. Our posts are optimized for visibility, not clarity. We’re no longer part of a conversation; we’re curating an audience.
Shallow Threads, Deep Impacts
Because emotionally charged content performs best, outrage has become the currency of online discourse. Nuance — the messy, human, often contradictory truth of things — simply doesn’t go viral. It doesn’t fit into a headline, a meme, or a tweet.
Online arguments rarely resolve. They escalate. Hot takes beget hotter takes. Threads become battlegrounds where winning matters more than understanding.
And yet the impacts run deep. Even those who don’t actively participate feel the pressure. To speak up, to align, to defend, to disengage. Social norms get set by visibility: what gets seen is assumed to be what is common, what is acceptable, what is true. The medium becomes the message, and the message becomes increasingly narrow.
Naming the System, Not Blaming the Users
This isn’t about blaming people for how they engage online. Most are doing the best they can with the tools they’ve been given. The issue is the design of those tools.
Social media platforms are not broken. They are functioning exactly as intended. They generate profit by encouraging frequent use and heightened emotion. That means designing systems that reward knee-jerk responses and visibility over substance.
When we recognize this, we can stop seeing online behavior as a moral failing and start seeing it as a systemic outcome. We can hold space for the desire many people feel: to have better, deeper conversations. We just need different environments in which to have them.
Conclusion
We cannot build something better until we understand what we’re inside of. The illusion of discourse persists not because people are inherently shallow or combative, but because the systems we use incentivize those behaviors.
But systems can be changed. They are designed, and what is designed can be redesigned.
This essay is the first in a series that uses systems thinking to examine the hidden mechanics behind our digital communication spaces. Rather than viewing online dysfunction as the result of bad actors or bad manners, we aim to reveal the structures that shape our interactions — and explore how reimagining those structures might lead us toward healthier, more meaningful forms of connection.
In the next essay, we’ll examine the architecture of online platforms: how they shape our behavior, how they profit from our engagement, and what it might mean to design for dialogue instead of reaction.
References
- Berners-Lee, Tim. The Future of the Web. Lecture, MIT Laboratory for Computer Science, 14 Apr. 1999, https://www.w3.org/Talks/1999/0414-LCS35-tbl/.
- Barlow, John Perry. “A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace.” Electronic Frontier Foundation, 8 Feb. 1996, https://www.eff.org/cyberspace-independence.
- United States, Congress, Senate, Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation. Protecting Kids Online: Testimony of Frances Haugen, Facebook Whistleblower. 5 Oct. 2021. Congressional hearing transcript, Congress.gov.
- Milli, Smitha, et al. “Engagement, User Satisfaction, and the Amplification of Divisive Content on Social Media.” PNAS Nexus, vol. 4, no. 3, 2025, article pgaf062, doi:10.1093/pnasnexus/pgaf062.
- Gligoric, Kristina, Ashton Anderson, and Robert West. “Causal Effects of Brevity on Style and Success in Social Media.” arXiv, 5 Sept. 2019, doi:10.48550/arXiv.1909.02565.
- Google. “Understanding Message Delivery | Firebase Cloud Messaging.” Firebase, 2025, https://firebase.google.com/docs/cloud-messaging/understand-delivery.
- X Corp. “Migration Guide: Timelines Endpoints.” X Developer Platform, 2019, https://developer.x.com/en/docs/x-api/v1/tweets/timelines/guides/migration-guide.
- Riordan, Monica A., and Lauren A. Trichtinger. “Overconfidence at the Keyboard: Confidence and Accuracy in Interpreting Affect in E-Mail Exchanges.” Human Communication Research, vol. 43, no. 1, 2017, pp. 1–24, doi:10.1111/hcre.12093.
- Terry, Christopher, and Jeff Cain. “The Emerging Issue of Digital Empathy.” American Journal of Pharmaceutical Education, vol. 80, no. 4, 2016, article 58, doi:10.5688/ajpe80458.
- Elsaesser, Caitlin, et al. “Small Becomes Big, Fast: Adolescent Perceptions of How Social Media Features Escalate Online Conflict to Offline Violence.” Children and Youth Services Review, vol. 122, 2021, article 105898.
- Zhao, Dora, Diyi Yang, and Michael S. Bernstein. “Mapping the Spiral of Silence: Surveying Unspoken Opinions in Online Communities.” arXiv:2502.00952, 2 Feb. 2025, https://arxiv.org/abs/2502.00952.
- Traberg, Cecilie S., et al. “The Persuasive Effects of Social Cues and Source Effects on Misinformation Susceptibility.” Scientific Reports, vol. 14, 2024, article 4205, doi:10.1038/s41598-024-34539-0.
- McLuhan, Marshall. Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man. New American Library, 1964.
- Meta Platforms, Inc. Form 10-K (fiscal year ended 31 Dec. 2023). U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, filed 1 Feb. 2024. https://www.sec.gov/ix?doc=/Archives/edgar/data/1326801/000132680124000010/meta-20231231.htm.