Why we're addicted to online outrage

The internet is angrier than ever. And that suggests something deeper than mere prickliness.

Angry man
(Image credit: (Thinkstock))

Why do we love to hate each other online? Over at Beta Beat Ryan Holiday writes about "outrage porn," the steady stream of insincerely performed umbrage and gulping hysteria that seeps like superconcentrated vinegar out of the web's pores every moment of every day. He writes, "'Outrage porn,' as we've come to call it, checks all the boxes of compelling content — it's high valence, it drives comments, it assuages the ego, projects guilt onto a scapegoat, and looks good in your Facebook Feed."

Holiday points to stories about Steve Martin's "racist" Twitter joke, or the way Lena Dunham was photoshopped, and wonders if the cynical manufacture of trivial outrage dulls our senses to real outrages that demand real action, like the displacement of 2 million Syrians from civil war. Perhaps it does, but Holiday doesn't offer an explanation of why we are addicted to outrage, only venturing that it is somehow selfish.

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Michael Brendan Dougherty

Michael Brendan Dougherty is senior correspondent at TheWeek.com. He is the founder and editor of The Slurve, a newsletter about baseball. His work has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, ESPN Magazine, Slate and The American Conservative.