re: Your Score, Please
We already live inside a scoring system. We just didn't vote for it, can't see it, and have absolutely no say in how it's used. Every search query, every click, every purchase and pause and scroll feeds into profiles that Google, Meta, Amazon, and Apple have been building about us for years. The data exists. The social graph exists. The difference is that it belongs to them, not to us - and it's used not to protect us, but to sell to us, manipulate us, predict us.
That is the consequence of weaponizing the human desire for attention. Like / Dislike systems, even the Toast system on this blog service, are a part of that. Add the Trending page of the Discovery feed and we already have a 'lite' version of the average social media algorithm.
Natural competition arises from the score tally on everyone's posts. That's why I feel rather cynical about the existence of the Trending page. Whether you agree on what the Bear blog-celebs write or not - I mean, the fact that they consistently get the most Toasts the quickest probably means the users do - you cannot deny how predictable the Feed immediately becomes after using it for just a few days. "AI sucks." "Fascism is encroaching our American democracy!" The iconic "I am still a patron of Adolf Hitler's pub" which is crafted with such self-smug derision making it a perfect blog meme format. 2016 doesn't feel so far away after all. Sometimes, I feel like I'm browsing Reddit more than I am browsing Bear.
My problem with the Bear Trending feed and by extension the Toast feature is that it encourages the opposite of the service's supposed purpose - said purpose being individualist expression; it encourages users to write for the lowest common denominator, subjects that "the majority" agrees on. It also encourages users to seek reading the most popular entries, partly because they predispose themselves to agreeing to what has been written first and gaining actual insight second.
I find myself at awe at what a waste people's blogs are even when every possible distraction has been extracted in a service such as this. Introspection has been exploited as an excuse to bloviate on the average user's pet issues. I find myself reading the Code of Conduct, only to find this nugget of gold:
Certain posts or the entire blog may be hidden from the discovery feed to keep our shared garden enjoyable for everyone. Kinds of posts that may be hidden include, but are not limited to: Excessively shitty or negative posts. Passive-aggressive jabs. Subtle digs or vague-posting. Gratuitous swearing. Lying or amplifying falsehoods. Low effort posts. AI generated content.
Posts may also be hidden or weighted on the discovery feed at the moderator's discretion. At the end of the day the discovery feed is a community hub and not a means of distributing content. Curation over chaos.
Curation over chaos. Ok, so what are we curating here? A safespace for the same anti-AI, anti-fascism advocacy I can find on Bluesky, Reddit, Tumblr? I find myself wondering what makes Bear different after all, besides in aesthetic. I came here to experience a different Internet, though I always had the suspicion, now conviction, that this idealism is simply impossible.
The very DNA of writing on the Internet has been poisoned for over a decade and because everyone is asymptomatic at least, no one knows how to run it back.
To make a final point about my gripes with the Toast Social Credit system, I am personally frustrated by the fact that my "terminal theme is cool and if you don't like it you are a loser" post has been my most "successful" post metrics-wise, meanwhile barely anybody actually bothered to check the other installments of my alien invasion serial when I put them out. I'm not supposed to concern myself with the 'performance' of any given post, the point of Blog is to just write whatever you want and have fun - at least that was what I was led to believe. The existence of such a system forces me to think in this way. This is how you get an inhuman like Mr Beast, where Analytics drives your every move, every calculation in your mind, every tailored media campaign and engineered philanthropy to chase the ever elusive climbing line on a chart. Human lives don't figure into that in any way besides a manipulatable economic unit.
I don't want that. I don't want to hatefully glare at a post I wrote for fun eclipsing the other longer post that I wrote not only for fun but also in the hopes of entertaining the audience in a more substantial way than "haha meme make me laugh" and then mindlessly clicking the Upvote at the bottom of the screen.
I don't know how to end this, uh - I am still a top customer at Adolf Hitler's Taco Establishment?
chunk of coal productions™, 2026.