The Outrage Industrial Complex
What does it mean for humans wanting to advocate for social change?
A cartoon
A thought
Somewhere in the past week, this phrase caught my ear, turns out it is a phrase common in political and media circles. Wikipedia helps clarify it for me:
“The OIC creates and distributes outrage media, digital or print content specifically intended to provoke anger or outrage among its consumers to increase engagement.”
Amusingly synonymed “rabble-rousing for fun and profit”1
Getting us outraged is a profitable business. Outrage erases nuance2 and pits us against each other. Yet, outrage feels morally appropriate at this point in time. It feels weirdly wrong not to express outrage at things you find truly outrageous. Richard Thompson Ford writes in The American Interest that “there is a good reason we feel an obligation to feel and express outrage: We assume it is a reliable force for social change.” but that “The expression of outrage is no longer a form of effective political protest; instead, it is an aesthetically debased form of entertainment.”
This newfound clarity causes me to ask, What does this change for me, in my life and more importantly, how do we advocate for social change if outrage has lost its power?
Ford concludes that “in a culture of pervasive outrage, everything is an outrage, so nothing is.” He advises students who wish to organise a demonstration against the latest outrageous speaker invited to speak at Stanford “to hit back harder by going to the movies or staying home with a good novel. We should starve the profiteers of outrage by ignoring them: Without our rage, they are nothing”.
Yikes, while I can see his point, this feels like fatalistic advice. I’m also musing these ideas in the week that Julian Assange finally caught a break and was able to return home to Australia. This seems proof of the possibility in protest, people power and politics to unite us around things such as freedom of the press and democracy. The consistent efforts from individuals as diverse as the fellow in Canberra who permanently painted his van with the message “Free Assange” more than a decade ago to the final cross-political party united effort to negotiate his path home.
WE HAVE MORE IN COMMON THAN THE OUTRAGE INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX WANTS US TO BELIEVE.
So, what have I changed on a day-to-day basis as a result of this train of thought?
I am being deliberate in the media I consume. My son told me about Groud News It is a news platform that processes 60,000 news articles a day from 50,000 sources and merges each of them into a single story. You can read the summary story or dive into the individual source stories, all of which are ranked for bias and fact by the quality of the source. I’ve just started using it, so will refrain from a wholehearted endorsement but it certainly makes it very easy to get multiple perspectives and access to stories from media sources in far-flung places. Weirdly, it makes me feel like the news is less important and far less concrete.
I am slowing down and opting out of my consumption. I don’t know where the line is here, I’m actively trying to find it. I still fear missing out if I opt out of social media altogether. If I am honest, I still hang around Instagram as I wonder if I should share Li’l Bean there. It seems like a large pool of people who might enjoy meeting them. It also seems like a nasty sticky spiders web that I am probably better off without! This is an early 2024 version of L’il Bean when I was contemplating if I was brave enough to share at all!
Note the shading that has since gone by the wayside as I try to keep Li’l Bean as simple as possible - thus turning off my inner perfectionist!
In the course of writing this post, I saw a TikTok post shared by
. Where a young lady discovers that she and her boyfriend are being shown completely different and opposing comments under an IG post. I understood the algorithm is managing the posts that I see, I did not understand that it was also managing the comments that I see - that is an extraordinary tool for reinforcing our personal bubble view of the world and othering everybody else. So, for now, I’ve decided to give IG a miss with L’il Bean and will start to share on the Weare8app instead - social media for good, without an algorithm.You can come and say hi to me and Li’l Bean over there at Sparkinthedark. I’ll be honest: I’ve been playing over there a little while and don’t find it super intuitive. It seems trickier to find good people to follow, but if I want things to be different, then I need to try something different!
The biggest question still remains, if outrage is no longer an effective tool for social change - then what is?
Perhaps it is love?
Our love for this extraordinary world, for the weirdness of the barnacles, for the beauty of a sunset, for the laughter with a friend and the hug of a child. Imagine, if we were driven by love, not outrage. That would change everything. From now on, when I feel outrage I will try to find a way to respond from love.
Glimmers and sparks*
My glimmers for today are:
A delicious rhubarb cake my son cooked for dessert.
My daughters cooking dinner for us when I had a late meeting.
This gorgeous post from
on Imaginationscapes.
Li’l bean is your reminder to pause and ask: What are your glimmers for today?
From your friend and your small, steadfast companion,
*Drawing Li’l Bean helped me navigate out of a period of depression in 2023. A good friend 13, 595km away, helped, too, through a ritual of swapping daily glimmers via text.
A glimmer is a tiny spark of hope, enthusiasm or joy that lifts your heart. By helping me find three glimmers each day, she gently helped me see the joy and beauty already around me.
I’d like to share this practice with you and invite you to reflect on your glimmers for the day when you read this. Think of Li’l Bean as a reminder to notice the glimmers and sparks in your life. We’d love it if you would like to share your glimmers in the comments or by hitting reply (if you don’t like sharing publicly).
Oh yes! I felt that when I was involved with Extinction Rebellion: outrage inflation. People are getting used to the protests and arrests that follow. I think you right: love and empathy never gets old. As well as humor.
Oh, I really appreciate this one. I would have to say love, too, although even though I believe in the power of love, and it’s a theme that keeps coming back to me again again lately on Substack, the logical academic part of my brain wants to know how sitting at home reading a good book is going to change the world! 🤪 And yet I also believe that the inner work does have an outer resonance! No easy answers here, but you’ve asked a lot of good questions. Appreciate all the resources you listed too, will go check them out!