The social media as well as the traditional media love a juicy story. They tell us every day about something that ought to make us mad. We’re tired of being outraged, I suppose.
In this piece, Harry Scanlon surveyed the various areas in which interest groups and their media enablers seek to work us up into a righteous furor. Except that the story is usually way out of proportion to the actual misdeed or comment. 2016 Presidential politics was the poster child for this phenomenon, but it was constant and many people tuned out. Like the boy who cried wolf, we just stopped believing the hyperventilating “sky-is-falling” spin anymore.
Turns out, of course, that the outrage before the 2016 was just the warm-up for the post-election outrage. Since then, the media has treated us to non-stop outrage about something Trump said or they claim he said. (Curiously, they pay relatively little attention to what his administration actually does. I suppose because they can’t provoke instant outrage if they actually have to investigate and report about an issue that just might – horrors – be complicated and have more than one side to it.)
The radical Green enviro movement is constantly outraged. The #MeToo zealots were outraged. The multitude of conspiracy hounds (from Russian interference with US elections, to the latest – 5G cell towers and Covid-19) scream non-stop. And now, Black Lives Matter has made a multi-year, well-funded media campaign the focus of current outrage. Actually, police misconduct SHOULD create outrage, but BLM has many other issues besides that one, and I expect we’re already weary of that outrage, too.
What to do? Well, its tempting to tune-out completely, but the better route is to filter and curate and measure your daily dose of outrage. Stay involved and stay informed. Listen to your allies and your opponents, but do your best to avoid outrage of every kind.
What Are We To Make of This? 