Twitter's recommendation system doesn't only try to draw your attention. Tweets and their replies form a tree, and the system wants those trees to grow as much as possible.
It turns out the human brain is especially vulnerable to things such as political takes, violence, or simply stuff it perceives as dumb or useless. And there's FOMO as well. Twitter exploits those weaknesses to provoke a response.
At worst it's a simple reply. Maybe a emoji tagging a friend, who then tags another friend, and so on. At best it will be a huge tree of people arguing with each other, a tree that can grow infinitely on paper.
It turns out the human brain is especially vulnerable to things such as political takes, violence, or simply stuff it perceives as dumb or useless. And there's FOMO as well. Twitter exploits those weaknesses to provoke a response.
At worst it's a simple reply. Maybe a emoji tagging a friend, who then tags another friend, and so on. At best it will be a huge tree of people arguing with each other, a tree that can grow infinitely on paper.