A CPC study released Wednesday warns that a Biden victory in the 2020 election likely means that liberal voters will receive considerably less needed attention on social media in 2021 and beyond, leading to adverse long-term psychological effects for many who have become reliant upon such attention.
The study, headed by Dr. Randall Kirger of the CPC, was devised to discover how social media contributed to serotonin and dopamine levels and how different social media-related stimuli affected those levels. It found that liberals, not conservatives, have been enjoying higher levels of feel-good chemicals in their body over the past 5 years, with levels on average higher than they’ve ever been measured since serotonin was discovered decades ago.
“They’re thriving on the attention they receive on social media, and they’re thriving on fear, both as a recipient and as the messenger,” the report reads.
“These chemical highs have a dark side,” Kirger told The Brown Valley Observer. “A Biden victory in 2020 isn’t the personal victory that many of these voters believe it is. The shift in political climate could lead to a deep psychological swoon — what we’re calling the Biden Effect, or the Biden Blues — as those social media likes and virtual back-claps come to a creeping stop during the first six months of 2021.”
Kirger says liberal voters and supporters have been treated to a 5-year binge on hormones and neurotransmitters as demand for vitriol has been at an all-time high within their social circles.
“With each clever twist of words like Cheeto, orange, hairpiece, or tiny hands, they’ve been rewarded with overwhelming positive response from people within their social circles and with those responses and all of that approval we’ve been able to measure high serotonin levels and dramatically increased dopamine transmissions. These levels have led to addictions for a high percentage of users as they’ve enjoyed a biological or chemical charge with every bit of the positive feedback they’ve received. As the demand wears thin for these repetitive clickwords and the likes and engagements wane, those persons will experience a sudden and dramatic drop-off in the brain firing off these hormones. As is the case with any addiction, if that particular well is allowed to run dry in the months following a Biden inauguration, then those addictions will be left unattended.”
Likening the addiction to other chemical dependencies, — which social media addictions resemble — Kirger pointed to suicide data in rural and suburban communities following large drug-busts to back The Biden Effect.
“Like with any other ‘dry-spell’, it’s quite the cocktail for widespread psychological disaster. For example, whenever the opiate supply is severed in an area, whenever we see a ‘dry-spell’ in the supply, we see a sharp local spike in everything from clinical visits to violent behaviors to — and especially — suicides. And that’s inevitably what we’ll see here. While a Biden victory would seem to provide a ready supply of happiness for his supporters, the honeymoon for modern presidents is generally short-lived. When that honeymoon period is over, that’s in essence what we’ll be doing to the millions of social media users who are addicted to the attention the past 5 years has afforded them: we’ll be removing the supply from their communities.”
Kirger was unsure of any way to reverse the trend and avoid the widespread psychological pitfalls associated with it.
“So long as they show up and vote and Biden wins, there’s really no way to reverse the trend,” Kirger stated. “They’ve enjoyed such exhilarating highs while Trump was president, it’s the only time many of them have ever really felt alive and needed. But, there’s only so much room atop the social media chain, so there’s really no way for the average liberal social media user to regain that type of audience and attention once Trump is out of the White House. They’re going to see reduced attention, and they’re going to experience the swoon. Once they vote Trump out, once the lame duck period is over and Biden is sworn-in, then they will begin to see the inevitable drop-off of hormones in their bodies. There’s no immediately knowable way to replace those chemicals at such unprecedented levels without a prescription.”
Dr. Randall Kirger has been head of both the Psychology and Gender Studies departments at Brown Valley Community College since 2014, and head of the Culvert County Psychological Council (CPC) since 2017.
Brown Valley Observer 