 Good morning, it gets Tuesday. I loved your video last week about how especially in online discourse we often create dichotomies that place us into one of two opposing camps, like two innocent examples being a hot dog is or is not a sandwich or cereal is or is not a soup. One might call these questions instantly debatable and of course they do extend beyond the hot dog and cereal realm. But the thing about these instantly debatable questions is they tend to avoid nuance and complexity. Like there is a spectrum of foods that involve some combination of processed wheat with meat and or cheese and or vegetables and within that spectrum there is another spectrum that we call sandwich and both of those spectra have fuzzy edges because that's the nature of spectra. But that is a boring take that does not demand engagement whereas a question like is butt legs does demand engagement and engagement is sort of the fuel that runs the social internet. Videos with higher engagement to view ratios on YouTube or TikTok are shown to more people than videos with low engagement to view ratios. The same is true for example on my Twitter like here are a couple of my recent tweets. This one a joke about the former prime minister of the UK got 20,000 likes and generated over 100 new followers. This one shares the news that Sierra Leone's Kisi Psychiatric Hospital has just been accredited as a full teaching hospital where for the first time in Sierra Leone's history physicians and nurses can get psychiatric training inside the country and it got about 5% as many likes as the Liz Trust one and generated zero new followers. Now obviously these are very different tweets one is a celebration the other is a joke one is about a news story everyone on Twitter knows about the other isn't but I see this everywhere I make stuff online. When I make something that allows people to agree or disagree with it in a straightforward dichotomous way it gets a larger audience than when I don't do that and this is true even when I'm sharing something that almost everyone would be happy about like that the Sierra Leonean healthcare system is getting stronger. The only real way I've found to get a lot of engagement around an issue that people basically agree about is to present it as instantly debatable as in this is obvious and the only reason it's not happening is because systems or people are merely evil and corrupt. The most notable example of this in my own life is probably my long-standing crusade against the US penny and I can get some engagement out of the idea that the US penny only gets minted because Congress mostly cares about divisive issues that can help them get reelected and not super obvious things like not minting pennies. However that kind of thing is much easier with small issues like pennies than it is with something big like the multifactorial injustice that has led to impoverished healthcare and education systems but here's the thing even though vlogbrothers videos about how stupid pennies are have gotten lots of engagement and views I would actually argue they have been less effective at making change pun intended than vlogbrothers videos that get far less views for instance vlogbrothers videos about Kisi psychiatric hospital and for me that's the real lesson the way to get simple engagement likes views comments is not necessarily the way to get actual engagement the kind of volunteering and fundraising and lobbying that helps bring about real change of course none of this is to delegitimize having fun on the internet and engaging with instantly debatable questions and I think even politically charged instantly debatable questions can be hugely helpful in getting us angry because we should be pissed off about injustice and sometimes those instantly debatable questions can be a way into a new or deeper understanding of it the year I graduated from high school 11 million children under the age of five died this year fewer than five million will that is still way too high but there was nothing inevitable about that progress it happened because people worked together to make it happen activists healthcare workers governments charities all worked together to make that progress and it was messy hard complicated work but that is real engagement not stopping at mere despair Hank I'll see you on Friday