Hate Inc.: Why Today's Media Makes Us Despise One Another

by Matt Taibbi

The news, basically, is bait to lure you into a pen where you can be sold sneakers or bath soaps or prostatitis cures or whatever else studies say people of your age, gender, race, class, and political persuasion tend to buy.

Napster founder and fellow onetime Facebook executive Sean Parker said something similar, talking about the “little dopamine hit” that you get from likes and other rewards. It was, he said, an experience designed to exploit human “vulnerability.”