Social media is a flywheel for bad ideas
"a heavy disk or wheel rotating on a shaft so that its momentum gives almost uniform rotational speed to the shaft and to all connected machinery."
In the technology industry, founders and investors like to talk about "flywheel effects" in their business models, which are effects that increase their growth momentum.
"In building a great company or social sector enterprise, there is no single defining action, no grand program, no one killer innovation, no solitary lucky break, no miracle moment. Rather, the process resembles relentlessly pushing a giant, heavy flywheel, turn upon turn, building momentum until a point of breakthrough, and beyond."
If we think about trends on social media, someone had to start them and push them until they gathered enough momentum that they started to power themselves through the feeds of many users.
In my opinion, the most impactful examples of the flywheel effect are in social media, when trends, memes, or attacks gather their own momentum when amplified by the algorithms and network effects of those platforms.
