The Pain Market

Are you a leftist? A liberal? Someone feeling violated or shaken by current events? Let’s talk.

Think about the last time someone said ‘fuck your pain’ — or some variant of it — to you. Maybe someone said that your experiences didn’t matter. Maybe they said you had too much privilege to know pain — or maybe they said that your pain didn’t matter in the big picture. Maybe they didn’t say ‘fuck you’ directly — they just posted something that dredged up intense feelings in you and you had no outlet. Maybe you were told that something that you believe strongly about yourself (or your experience) wasn’t true. Maybe you dealt with one of these situations for the millionth time, but today’s instance was the straw that broke the camel’s back.

Take that situation, and focus on how it made you feel. Center your recollection on feeling that pain.

Did you know that those feelings of hurt are used against you constantly? Talking about how will require consideration of some uncomfortable facts, though, so it’s best to just dive in if we want to understand better.

Uncomfortable truth number one: You are predictable, and your pain is a valuable commodity to political and media entities.

Yes, the pain you feel is real. Because the pain is real and reliable, it has been commodified, and it is traded by people who don’t give a whit about it — only what they can extract from you.

Humans become much more predictable when an advertisement, headline, or political message attacks their identity. Threat of invalidation or dismissal cues intense, predictable reactivity in humans almost universally. For a demonstration of the far-reaching nature of this phenomenon, look at how the Russians played the US populace (regardless of affiliation!) like fiddles during the 2016 elections (1).

What does predictability have to do with to the current political moment? That’s the very nature of pain: it has a very reliable value for parties interested in trading in it.

The GOP likes you focused on your pain because they can characterize you as unstable or anti-justice, with the added benefit that you’ll be so cowed by fear, pain, or hopelessness that you become inactive in the time leading up to election day. Additionally, your tears will collected and used to energize the most hardcore of the GOP. Look for reactions like yours to be further commodified leading up to the next election. Your pain is a commodity because it distracts you from more meaningful action, and is fuel for others’ fires. You will be distracted.

The Democrats are going to use your pain to hit you up for fundraising or other engagement. They’re looking to sell you a reduction in the dissonance, hopelessness, or pain you might feel by saying if you donate now, they’ll make sure this doesn’t happen again. They’ll tell you that unless their way wins, everybody loses — the stakes are always zero-sum, especially because of 2016! Your pain is a commodity because others will stoke it in you, then promise to reduce it for a price. You will pay.

Media and press entities will use your pain to drive clicks, views, comments, and other interactions to their pieces that focus on the pain of people like you — either justifying it or dismissing it. Whichever it is doesn’t really matter because these entities just want to keep the lights on, and they do that by playing on your emotions. Your pain is a commodity because your feelings can be converted into billable actions and ad views. You will click through.

You might be feeling a bit reactive right now — thinking that not everyone who is feeling pain will act as described. Even if you’re right, it doesn’t matter.

Uncomfortable truth number two: if you don’t react, your group will.

Your pain specifically matters in how it makes you react, not in the content of what you actually feel. This can be hard to wrap your head around, especially in the throes of agony.

Think of it this way: if you’re cut, you bleed, right? it doesn’t matter if you were sliced by a knife, sheet metal, or an overzealous cat who needs their claws trimmed. A thousand different things could cut you, but everything will make you bleed. Because of this predictable reaction, you are a knowable target.

Even if you’re a tough customer and decide you don’t want to buy bandaids (rebuffing the Democrats) or that you’ll keep a stiff upper lip (rebuffing the GOP) or you won’t look up a YouTube video on how to care for your wound (cutting out media) — enough people in your situation will want or do those things. Whichever way you turn, an institution hungry for your pain is ready and waiting to use you and those who feel like you do.

When others start reacting predictably, holdouts are doubly damned, because now there is social proof (2) to push along everyone who didn’t buy into the solutions offered. This creates a ‘reality snowball’ where it becomes harder and harder to not go along with the crowd. It makes you look like a fool if you don’t engage in the obvious solutions to the obvious problem.

Even if political moments are less random than kitchen accidents, any entity that relies on predictable group behavior will take every opportunity they can to force you to feel things. Pain is a golden goal. A great breadth of research suggests that avoiding pain is one of the strongest motivators that humans feel. In other words, our pain is a predictable commodity.

Uncomfortable truth number three: identity politics are especially susceptible to being commodified.

This is a short but bitter point. Above, I noted that the easiest way to push people into reacting was to threaten their identity or experiences. (3) Take a moment and think about the last time someone did this to you. How did you react? How did you feel?

Now imagine that your antagonist gets a docket detailing every group you belong to, every reality you believe about your authentic self, every truth you hold self-evident. Unless you’re possessed of a brilliant indifference to others, your hater is now your rhetorical puppeteer, able to provoke reactions at will as you defend everything you believe about yourself.

Such is a significant weakness of modern identity politics. This is not saying identities and boundaries are bad — this is saying that these things are very susceptible to commodification. (4) If I know you’re a woman who’s had an abortion, I can make you more predictable by bringing up Roe v. Wade. If I know you’re an immigrant, I can make you more predictable by showing people like you becoming denaturalized. If I know you’re a poor white male in the middle of America, I can bank on your reaction when I tell you that foreigners are coming to take jobs from you. If I know anything that you identify yourself by, I can weaponize it against you.

Uncomfortable truth number four: you don’t think about your value, and you’re selling yourself short.

How often do we consider that our emotions create systemically reliable reactions? How often do we consider that these emotions and reactions might be cultivated by others to their benefit? How often do we let our pain blind us to what it means beyond the self?

Most people are not trained to consider the value and mechanisms of their pain and predictability in the contexts of political and economic commerce. Yet it is imperative that you learn them.

You are not alone in your pain or in your predictability. Nobody on this planet is immune to feeling threatened, or fearful, (5) or invalidated. It is important to honor these feelings, in their time — but is equally important to make sure that you get the most out of your emotions and your work related to them.

You cannot change that your pain is commodified — but you can demand better terms, sell it elsewhere, or at least devalue it for the opportunists. How?

Defending against exploitation: a partial list

The following are some suggestions for what to do given the commodification of your pain. The list should not be considered exhaustive — especially because the circumstances and abilities of every person vary so widely.

If someone is forcing a reaction from you, you must ensure that you stand for something — not merely against everything. You might have to reframe issues that feel very personal in communal terms, you might have to care about the future more than the past, but if you are reduced to pure reaction — your pain is more valuable to your opposition than it is to you. There is nothing noble about symbols or action without substance, and your pain is not substance.

If someone asks you for a donation of money or time when they know you’re in pain, extract specifics from them: “How will you use this money? Whom will you support? If I give you this, what can I expect from you? How can I hold you accountable?” Ask them uncomfortable questions: “If I don’t donate to you, who would you direct me to donate to? I’m not happy with what you’ve done at (federal/state level) — can you direct me to a (state/local level) place to donate to?” Encourage your friends to do the same.

If you’re feeling drained, get off of social media. Right now. Don’t let others’ situations dictate your solutions, and accept that you’re compromised in the moment. Uninstall apps, don’t allow auto-login in your browser — remove the automaticity (6) that we all rely on when we’re drained.

Uncomfortable conclusion: Sacrifice is required, and you are not giving enough.

There is no happy ending, here. The cruelest part of this all-consuming pain queued up by political, media, and other transactional opportunists is that to change the system requires going beyond your pain into action. Too many people mistake genuine feelings for genuine action — when in fact those feelings are more easily acted on by others. It’s time to break the cycle, if only a little bit.

You cannot slough this off on allies. They will not understand the situation like you do. They need you.

You cannot believe you are special. Exploitation is wrong, but it is not rare. You must defend yourself, and others.

You cannot conduct purity tests on everyone who would help you. Doing so isolates you when you are most vulnerable, and renders you easier to manipulate.

You cannot hide behind arguments that others are more privileged and thus more able to do something. You don’t know their stories or their pain. Honor it like you honor yours.

You only get one life. It will be lived imperfectly, but it is imperative that you decide how to live it.

You cannot give up. Your fellow humans need you. The future needs you. You need you.

You can do this.

Thanks to Tamika, Christine, Kim, Rachael, Valerie, Peter and Ashley for their notes and inspiration.

Thanks to Bob Cialdini for teaching me to detect and protect against unethical uses of social influence.