I am ready for the outrage and call-out culture that has seemingly taken over the last several years to end. People are so quick to outrage over anything and everything. It's not unique to a political spectrum and both sides are equally bad at it. And people on both sides are so quick to white knight to virtue signal to show that they just perpetuate the outrage machine. Yes, this post is ironic. https://qz.com/1333018/how-americans-can-break-their-outrage-addiction/ “Anger is a public epidemic in America; it contaminates everything from media controversy to road rage to wars to mass shootings,” according to Jean Kim, a psychiatrist for the US Department of Health and Human Services and assistant professor at George Washington University. Kim says that anger is addictive—it feels good and overrides moral and rational responses because it originates from our primordial, original limbic system—the lizard brain, if you will. This is the part of our brain that responds automatically and is directly connected to the fight-or-flight response system. It controls adrenaline rushes, including those fueled by anger. Outrage gives us an unhappy high we keep trying to replicate.
I'm ready for the era of false equivalence to end. The fact that you've used favorite right wing crazy terms like white knighting and virtue signaling is a good example.
There's a lot of non-serious stuff to be outraged about. For the most part, I vent about it here and then have a more detached point of view if it's discussed in face to face company. As a partisan, it's pretty outrageous for Congress to obstruct Obama for 5-ish years (filibustering legislation, shutting down the government for "unnecessary spending", court and executive appointees, inviting Israel to Capital Hill to explicitly discuss American policy, etc...), only to turn around and talk about "moderation" and "not creating bad precedents". Bullshit, you and Fox riled up rednecks till their entire faces were the same color and now they expect civility when the pendulum shifts?? Pack the courts. Overturn the filibuster. Then you'll know what a "moderate left" truly is enough to work, plead and ask for it. These red faced b****es are all clutching their pearls and guns at the threat of real action while hootin and hollering at Trump's criminal and constitutionally dubious acts. Only way to get respect is an eye for an eye. Old Testament first two years. New Testament last two years.
A lot of this is related to the fact that Americans and westerners in general may have easy lives with no huge overarching problem so they go looking for something to give meaning and purpose to their life and satisfy their own internal drives. Without religion they replace that with some weird crap they picked up from pseudo intellectuals and politicians on Twitter. I actually have lived in both the third world and first world and I think most people in America are just spoiled, entitled and bored.
A lot of the "outrage" is originating from a vocal minority on social media, especially Twitter. Many of those people are useful idiots and probably just have WAY too much time on their hands. Some of it is simply trolling. Much of the outrage is also disingenuous...especially when it comes from articles and op-eds that are just obvious clickbait. In other words, inciting outrage is good for business, and it can be an asset for politicians. The vast majority of people in the US (and Canada, UK, Australia, etc.) ...particularly those who actually go out into the real world regularly and don't spend too much (if any) time on Twitter or 24-hr news or whatever...are either unaware of these cancel culture incidents, or don't really care. They're busy with their jobs, families, significant other, friends, Netflix, video games, sports, etc...and thus don't have time to pay attention to and get triggered over every itty bitty thing.
I don’t think there is anything inherently wrong or bad with outrage or any emotion itself. Outrage is also a different emotion from anger. It has anger but I think with disgust or maybe sadness. What you do with it is what is important. Ignoring or suppressing it is probably not good for your mental health. It driving you to correct an injustice is probably good. Physically or even verbally attacking someone because they tell a harmless or ignorant based joke is probably bad. Outrage based on selective allowable or twisted or fake data as inputs is probably .... going to lead you to sad place.. who knows where. Yes, overall, there is a bit much of sensitivity in our society but that’s perfectly fine. The problem isn’t that or the outrage emotion, I don’t think, but the ease to act upon it aggressively towards others .... and worse for some, feeling good and getting addictive to it. But when it is channeled toward positive helpful actions... all good in my book.
Case in point, ready the straight jacket. ^ (Kim says that anger is addictive—it feels good and overrides moral and rational responses because it originates from our primordial, original limbic system—the lizard brain, if you will.)
My impression is that outrage seems more outrageous when you get it from the internet, especially written formats like twitter or this bbs. Here, I can say, "I don't think what the President did was proper" and for me it's a passing thought and just sharing my reaction to news, but people will read it as outrage like I'm shopping sniper rifles in my other browser window. I might be unusually hard to excite, but I imagine even posters who say rash things are not actually as outraged as they sound.
Well, not to sound like a broken record, but OP, I also think it's important for everyone to realize there is a profitable business model at play, 24/7, that encourages outrage to increase their profit (via clicks, ad views, TV show views, etc). It helps me, a little, realizing that just about every media outlet wants me to be outraged. Their every choice of word, phrase, and image and video is wanting to engage a fight-or-flight response, b/c then I'll keep consuming this ****.
We live in the age of a la carte news. News delivered and curated how you want it. Most people haven't amounted to much intellectually or economically so they need to rage about it (white man, greedy CEOs if you're liberal or cancel culture, women, educated people, immigrants if you're conservative). The sooner we realize that anger and vitriol is inherently blended into our culture the easier it will be to turn it around. Though I doubt it will happen. Eventually the intelligent will move to countries with healthier lifestyles and America as we know it will eat itself alive with greed and corruption. It was this very thing that set us into the great recession to begin with. I think Raz had it right in Batman Begins. I think Gotham was beyond saving. I'd love to study the fall of Rome and other huge empires before it to see if they had similar issues that we do today. Just obviously in different mediums.
I think the profit driven media has a lot to do with as well as social media because it's easy for people to feel validated. But it's really on us as individuals if there was not an audience for this it would not exist.
i agree with your sentiment but the current culture means people losing there jobs and livelihoods on things done early in life or out of context. Nobody can be remiss or offer an apology, they must be flogged in the public square and banished.
This is really two conversations you're trying to have here. One is the general anger fix that people get from arguing on the twitter. The second is the brigade of angry white men who are regularly attacking women and minorities online because there are no immediate repercussions for their behavior as there would be in person. Don't conflate the two because they're different and don't provide a false equivalence between those who have always held power using that power to continue harassing, intimidating, and attacking those who've been comparatively powerless in society until now.