The digital ecosystem, he said, accelerates the speed with which opinions get made and also rewards a shorter attention span. Human beings have gotten used to this culture, which also allows for less impulse control. And people are also feeling more empowered: So when they tweet about Subway hiking up a footlong’s price to $6, Nitzburg thinks they feel that by voicing their opinion, they’ve contributed, potentially, to a change. That kind of brand slacktivism “certainly doesn’t feel trivial” to the person tweeting about it, although it might be to the rest of the world. Just expressing an opinion is often catharsis enough.