Outrage Incorporated: The Profiteers Behind the Internet’s Anger Machine
By Jon GingerichFebruary 11, 2014
All I know is that first you've got to get mad!
— Howard Beale (@Howard_Beale) March 16, 2009
If you’ve been online at all in the last several years you’ve probably noticed something: everyone is outraged. We’re offended, constantly, about everything. Social media has birthed this bizarre hazing ritual of unmasking and publicly shaming people who say idiotic things; a growing quota of our online activity involves participating in these social smugathons where crowds gather to cast moral aspersions on the hapless rube who did something awful that week. Outrage is a milieu in which we’re engaging others, and our boundless hunger for schadenfreude demands that we toss a new victim into the volcano every several days to keep the conversation going. It’s exhausting.