A Field Guide to Internet Emotion > 2.0 Amplify, *Intense Feelings Ahead*

Tech emotionographer Pamela Pavliscak hosts an 8-month Interintellect Salon series while writing her new book #Feels: How Technology is Changing Our Emotional Life for the Better. 

Have you ever wondered why we feel compelled to note and name every new variation of sadness online? Or what you call that emotional hangover you can get after scrolling social media? Or how to explain that little leap of anxiety when the 3 dots appear as someone writes you a text message, and then mysteriously disappears? Then this is the salon series for you!

#Feels 2.0 > Amplify

In the second session of the series, we’ll focus on how technology seems to amp up our emotions. Humans have long struggled to accurately convey emotion through drab screens. One exclamation point used to suffice, but now we need three!!! We add strings of emojis in our texts instead of a singular. Reacton gifs, crying selfies, and ahegao e-girl poses, fill in those missing non-verbal cues. Maybe extreme expression = extreme feelings. Are getting more emphatic IRL because of the internet?

Whether social media outrage, the shame wrought by internet pile-ons, or bouts of Zoom fatigue due to excessive nodding, supercharged emotion can wring us out with exhaustion. It doesn’t help that when we live, like, love, emotions can have a compound effect. But can this outpouring of sentiment motivate us to positive action? 

Artificial intelligence that tries to suss out emotional expression often relies on the posed, the static, the extreme. Will we smile more often and more broadly so the machines can register it? Or will meditation will take on new meaning when we have to control our racing heartbeat so that it doesn’t set off alarms?

Perhaps we’re entering a new expressive age after an era where cool has been dominant the emotional style. Perhaps we’re becoming more adept at expressing emotion. Or perhaps we’re just getting worked up for nothing. Let’s discuss!

Pre-Salon Prep

The Feelbot is still taking responses about your emotions and how tech impacts them if you want to try!

Please read or watch the following, before the session:

• Read The Dark Psychology of Social Networks by Jonathan Haidt and Tobias Rose Stockwell in the Atlantic
• Watch Myisha Cherry’s TEDx Anger is Not a Bad Word 
• Flashback to OMG! The Hyperbole of Internet Speak by Jessica Bennett in The New York Times or stay with the times and read A Taxonomy of Gen Z Selfie Poses in by Rebecca Jennings in Vox
• Try out Kyle McDonald’s Facework or watch Noah Levenson’s Stealing Ur Feelings

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