The Outrage Economy

Your anger is being farmed.

The number of rage-baiters, of people trying to provoke your anger deliberately, even if it’s at them, has skyrocketed. Online, offline, just about everywhere there are people who have had the slightly counterintuitive realization that anger can sell. Twitter might be the worst offender, the clearest example. Over there you get a pairing of racist and homophobic and sexist people feeling more and more at home with the fact that users who pay for the platform make more money if they get more views, and you get a lot of crap like this:

Elijah, who made that tweet, is a known racist and bigot. His disgusting response to the Port of Baltimore tragedy got over 11 million views, mostly from people calling it out. But, in doing so they gave him the views he wanted. Elijah might be a fascist asshole (he is), but unfortunately he’s also good at social media. He knows that anger generates the views he’s seeking. I’m guessing that tweet made you more than a little upset; I know the pissed off response it provoked for me. And he’s one of countless people farming your anger, not just on Twitter, and not just on the internet. Our rage is being used and abused all over.

Your anger is a valuable resource. It drives clicks, views, and purchases. It’s especially valuable to media owners, executives, and influencers who know that your fury is a priceless commodity for their networks and publications and more. Smaller creators, social media users, and advertisers have also caught on: outrage reliably fuels virality. That’s why your anger isn’t just being mined, it’s being manufactured.

There’s a lot to be angry about, don’t get me wrong. My anger is pointed in multiple directions at any one time. There are systems and people and events that deserve our righteous rage. But it’s worth pausing and asking: “Is this outlet, this person, trying to arouse my anger for their benefit?” or “Is my anger being translated into anything productive here?” Oftentimes the answer to that first question is a pretty clear yes. And, just as often, the answer to the second question is yes as well; our rage is being activated not to direct it towards change, but to direct it towards monetization.

It’s not easy to avoid being consumed with anger in this world. And I see a lot of people understandably say something along the lines of: “Isn’t anger motivating when it comes to injustice?” My reply would be that it can be, but we have to be aware of how the outrage economy assaults us, hurling one infuriating news item after another our way in such rapid and relentless succession that a lot of us are left immobilized rather than moved to action. Then the next day it’s rinse and repeat.

Photo by Dmitry Vechorko on Unsplash

Of course, not everyone is caught up in this economy of outrage. Some people are offline, some are motivated by their anger to turn towards organizing and action, some focus in on one issue and are less prone to being hit again and again by the different outrage segments tossed our way. But millions and millions of us are liable to fall into this news and content cycle. If we’re news junkies, or simply people who spend a lot of time online, it can be hard to dodge the trap. And our animal brains play a big role. A lot of media these days evokes fear, bringing up our fight-or-flight responses. But then, if we turn towards fighting, we often don’t have the tools or the networks to actually battle the problem we’ve encountered. So we’re left with our anger. Then we’re hit with another problem, and another.

What else does this anger do for us, to us? Sometimes it pushes us toward justice, but sometimes it only serves to mask despair, making us briefly feel powerful even when we haven’t built the power to change something. It can distract us rather than focusing our minds. I know some of this might seem paradoxical, but the modern outrage economy is different than the information landscapes of the past. The barrage is near-constant and the scale can be global, national, local or anything in between. We don’t have the capacity to process everything happening on Earth simultaneously, and we certainly don’t have the ability to grapple with everything negative that’s going on across this planet.

Photo by Chris Gallagher on Unsplash

I don’t want you to think that we should look away from tragedies, structual problems, or the systems and people harming life on Earth. But even well-intentioned people, often well-intentioned people, fall into the misconception that what we owe the problems and the horrors around us is primarily our attention. Whatever the reasoning, a deliberate shift is needed where we approach that which enrages us not simply by consuming media about it, but by organizing around it. It’s less sexy to put out calls to action that encourage people to attend meetings and events and trainings than it is to put out endless scathing critiques and fury-laced rants, but it’s what the world needs; it’s what we need. We also need criticism, and anger, but it has to be channeled and paired with action if it is to lead to something more than a continual farming of our outrage, to something more than the addictive emotion and chemical high of righteous anger going nowhere.

In the end the message here is largely to be mindful about our media consumption. There are long-term goals we should pursue around non-profit and publicly operated media and social media. But in the short term we need to do some pausing, some reflecting, some weighing of how exactly we’re being trained by the barrage of content and journalism and opinion that we consume. We’re in a pivotal moment in history, and being buffeted around by one stream of anger-inducing content after another doesn’t cut it. We’re called to be deliberate, thoughtful, and disciplined. We’re called to transform anger and frustration into action, not to let them be ends in themselves. It’s not easy, and it takes an assessment of the sources we consume and follow. But I think it’s possible.

A lot of us have a sense, one way or another, that we’re tired of the hamster wheel. There’s a deep exhaustion that comes from anger with no outlet. It’s consuming. Action is one way out, but many of us need to step away from the outrage economy to move from anger to action. We need to stop riding the highs that inevitably come crashing down, and move to more measured media, or media that pairs fury with organizing in a deliberate manner. There’s no one right way, but there is a wrong way. Letting our justified anger be mined, farmed, and monetized isn’t the answer. It’s time to see with clearer eyes and to understand when we’re being subjected to this subtle exploitation. Then, it’s time to reject it and work towards a world where there isn’t quite so much to be angry at.