Let’s be honest—we’ve all done it.

You’re driving down the interstate, foot steady on the gas, maybe in the left-hand lane behind one tractor-trailer that’s trying to pass another. That other truck is hugging the right lane, riding beside you like a wall of steel. You glance in the rearview and there’s a big ol’ pickup just a little too close behind. You’re boxed in tight.

And then—PING.

Your phone lights up. Your brain jumps like a bass in a pond. You know you shouldn’t look. You tell yourself not to. But your eyes start dancing: windshield, side mirror, rearview mirror. Then you do something reckless.

You grab the phone. Just a quick glance. Just to see who it was. Just to see what it was.

That moment—where curiosity beats common sense? That’s not a character flaw. That’s brain chemistry. It’s dopamine, the same chemical that kicks in when you hit the jackpot or fall in love. Every ping is a little hit. And your brain, bless it, has been trained to think that ping matters.

But most of the time, it doesn’t.

And sometimes—especially in rural America—that ping isn’t just distracting. It’s how we get programmed.

This whole “ping” problem isn’t just about safety on the road. It’s how I personally watched MAGA take root right here in my own neck of the woods in rural America.

Back in 2016, during Trump’s first campaign, I had family and neighbors, especially younger folks, who were big on Twitter (now X). They didn’t start off supporting him politically. He was just... hilarious. A New York billionaire with zero filter tweeting like a DRUNK uncle on a tear.

I asked one of them, “Why’d you follow Trump?”

He laughed. “He’s just crazy. Some of the stuff he tweets, I can’t help but laugh.”

That was the beginning.

It didn’t start with policy. It didn’t start with MAGA. It started with attention. Every wild, audacious tweet became a conversation piece, down at Hardee’s, at the co-op feed store, in the repair shop. Folks weren’t quoting legislation or policy. They were quoting tweets. That dopamine ping turned into social currency.

It wasn’t long before some folks who had voted Democrat their whole lives started repeating Trump slogans like they were gospel. Not because they read his platform, but because they saw him on their phones, heard him, laughed at him, shared him. That’s how a New York billionaire became a folk hero in places he’d never stepped foot in. He built a brand and more importantly a relationship with rural America.

That’s the power of the ping. Memo to Democratic Party HQ: A yard sign can’t out-shout a dopamine ping, and canvassing their door doesn’t help much when X and Truth Social’s Pings have already been talking to 'em.

See, every time your phone buzzes, dings, or lights up, your brain gives you that little jolt of dopamine. It lights up your brain’s reward center and turns the reasoning part of your brain,the prefrontal cortex, down to a soft whisper. That’s the part that’s supposed to help you make smart decisions.

And once your reward center gets a taste, it wants more. You don’t just check one ping. You check five. Then you scroll. Then you're in a rabbit hole of memes, half-truths, and hot takes.

Now multiply that by a thousand days, a million voters, and an internet built by billionaires to sell your attention to the highest bidder.

Rural America didn’t fall because it was foolish. It fell because it was targeted.

We already live in information deserts, with little to no newspaper coverage or local tv news reporting. We don’t get a full spread of perspectives. We get algorithm-fed outrage, mostly from media conglomerates who know exactly how to get a rise out of us—and how to keep us coming back for more.

The more we scroll, the less we talk to each other outside our social ‘bubbles’.

The more we react, the less we reason.

And the more we forget who we are, neighbors, friends, working people who used to care more about fairness than firebrands.

Our brains weren’t built for 100 pings a day. They were built for front porches. For fellowship. For calling your cousin to check on his kid, not DMing some stranger in a Facebook brawl.

Start simple.

Out here, every distracted mile, every fractured friendship, and every lost vote matters.

We built this country with work boots and hard work, not dopamine.

Let’s act like it.

Till next time, that’s the story from the ‘Back Forty’. — John W. Peace II

Interested in republishing this article? Contact the author at [email protected] for permission and details.

John W. Peace II is a fifth-generation farmer from Big Stone Gap, Virginia, where he grew up on his family’s dairy, Clinch Haven Farms, and still lives today farming hay and beef cattle. He’s a proud father to Trey and Shelby Peace, and partner in life to Cathy Swinney. A Virginia Tech graduate with graduate studies at Penn State, he served as the youngest Chair of the Wise County Board of Supervisors (2004–2008). John co-owns SafeHavenServices.co and urTOPIX LLC (urTopixLLC.com), a Democratic campaign consulting firm focused on reaching rural voters that is sponsored by www.RuralAmericaRising.com PAC. He’s also a two-time Amazon bestselling author. Learn more at www.JohnWPeace.com.