I don't think the prime reason that journalists want to interview me about QS is the fact that the story about QS provides positive emotions for the audience of the news article.

Well journalism might be a slightly different category, but I still think we can use it. I'll try to demonstrate this in as clear and concise a manner as possible. Which newspaper are you more likely to buy, one that tells you things you feel are true and interesting, or one that tells you things you DON'T feel are true and interesting?

Memes can profit from bringing people positive emotions but plenty of memes spread throughout society because it's beneficial to spread them for other reasons.

Is the core reason that I recommended HPMOR to another person that it's fun? No, it's not. I find the story fun but I recommend it for reasons that are deeper.

We need examples of these reasons in order to discuss them.

That's not what I meant with payload. The post makes quite controversial claims and if you look at my posts in general you will find that posts with negative claims often do receive a few downvotes. This post is voted 100% positive as of the time of this writing. There's a reason for that. It's not that the post provides mainly actual true and useful information.

I can't agree immediately that positive votes accurately represent a story being spread or giving people these types of emotions. They might, but there might be other factors there, like personal issues, flames etc. But that's a tangent and let's not go off on too many of those.

Highly manipulative but anyone who sees the manipulation and that it effects them has to accept the point I'm making.

But why? Why do they accept the point? Because it strikes them as true. This is separate from whether it's actually true. Remember my example of ancient creation myths. They are most definitely not true, but they spread and effected people because the ancient villagers felt that they were true, or felt that it satisfied their curiosity. Perhaps you can see why I thus state that feeling true or feeling useful or correct is what's important here, rather than actually being so. (actually being true is what's important for science)