If you want more likes on a post, stop acting like you know everything. People engage way more when you admit you're not sure.
March 27, 2026
Original Paper
Linguistic Uncertainty and Engagement in Arabic-Language X (formerly Twitter) Discourse
SocArXiv · nh6q9_v1
The Takeaway
While it is often assumed that 'confidence is king' on social media, this analysis of thousands of posts found that linguistic uncertainty markers act as interactional cues. Being 'unsure' shifts the dynamic from a broadcast to a conversation, specifically driving higher rates of replies and retweets.
From the abstract
Linguistic uncertainty is a common feature of social media discourse, yet its relationship with user engagement remains underexplored, particularly in non-English contexts. Using a dataset of 16,695 Arabic-language tweets about Lebanon posted over a 35-day period, we examine whether tweets expressing linguistic uncertainty receive different levels and forms of engagement compared to certainty-marked tweets. We develop a lexicon-based, context-sensitive classifier to identify uncertainty markers