Let’s outrage on this
Facebook login misunderstanding
Tumblr stealing the pitchfork account
The last thing Sarah Palin said
Whatever you want
I think this post from Ryan at the Barbarian Group, The Buzzkillers, does a great job of stating the phenomenon in clear terms. People on the Internet are becoming more and more outraged by the day. The things to be outraged about has not increased over the last year (I would argue that they have gone way down, thanks to another target of some outrage, and the general leveling of the universe to sanity), but the tools of outrage are clearly blossoming. Twitter. Hi.
Even John Stewart felt compelled to comment on the matter.
I feel like we’ve been exercising the outrage muscle for the last few years. I suppose George W. Bush got us hooked. And the media likes outrage because… well the media likes what it likes.
Just like the best way to lose weight is to eat right and exercise frequently, the truth in this case is less than interesting. Truth is boring. Most of the things that we’re getting outraged about don’t deserve the outrage, and one of these days the boy who outraged about the wolf is gonna learn his lesson. But it’s not going to be for a long time, and it’s going to be boring when it happens.
February 19th, 2010 at 3:14 am
Another great post. However, don’t get too outraged by the outrage: it’s an attention grabbing escalation that will die down soon enough.