I am outraged. Livid. Red faced and yelling mad. I could
head butt my way through a wall right now. I could melt steel beams with my
searing gaze. And what is the source of
my hyperbolic outrage?
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| I am expressing displeasure. |
Outrage.
I am outraged by outrage. Have you seen the outrage out
there? We are wallowing in it. We are drowning in the foam of millions of angry
mouths. Have you seen the internet? It is a raging furnace stoked to a hellfire
heat by news organizations and fanned by politicians and cast outward by bloggers and Youtubers. And, like a nuclear fission reactor, news reports spawn
outrage and the outrage spawns more outrage with spawns even more outrage. That process spreads and spirals and
burns across the airwaves and radiates through the wires that form that
disconnected mishmash of devices we call the internet. And the fire burns.
Are you outraged by the outrage? How can you not be?
[This post is about to make a drastic tonal shift. To
ease the stress of that shift, please look at the adorable picture below.
Breathe. Smile. Repeat.]
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| Outrageously adorable. |
Buried somewhere in rage above, there is a truth. And that
truth is that the news is a business that is fueled by our outrage. You see,
despite proclamations of serving a greater good, when the dust settles, news organizations
are businesses. They exist to make money for their employees, their investors, their
executives, and their owners (in the opposite order). That is, in and of
itself, neither good nor bad. It merely exists.
Because the media makes money from advertisers, and
advertisers pay more when more people see their adds, the media is incentivized
to attract as many readers, watchers, and listeners as possible. Again, this is
not bad. But what it causes is bad.
Outrage makes for easy exposure. We live in a big world
full of wonders and horrors. If we highlight the horrors and frame them in such
a way that there is an obvious dichotomy, we allow people to pick sides and
yell at each other. And then experts can sit on cable news channels and weigh
in on which side is right and feed the rage. And quasi-political talk show
hosts can be funny and snide and feed the rage. And people can write blog posts
that pick sides and feed the rage.
And, in the end, the media makes money from the
advertising dollars that flow in based on both sides hating each other loudly
and publically. And Facebook makes money from the ads that run adjacent to the
hateful rants. And Youtube takes their share of the advertising money from the
viral videos of people yelling at people who disagree with them.
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| Get into blogging, they said. That's where the real money is. |
Which is fine, I guess. Who am I to tell you that hating
people who disagree with you is wrong? It’s your right. But it won’t solve the
original problem. It’ll let you feel self-righteous and justified in your rage,
but there are few real world problems that can be solved with the liberal
application of self-righteous rage. In fact, other than make money for various media outlets, the only thing that outrage does is make you feel like you've done something without actually doing anything.
We need, as a culture, to admit that (1) most problems
aren’t going to be solved by simple either/or solutions and (2) our personal view is
probably at least partially wrong. If we can start there, I see a brighter
future for the world at large.
If you think I’m being too bleeding-heart here, ask
yourself this question: When was the last time that you heard someone yell at
you and thought, “I find their logic strikingly brilliant. I am swayed by their
forceful words and shall concede their point immediately”?
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| If I yell loud enough, I will solve the problem. |
Or we can just keep stoking the furnace of the hate
machine.
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