Outrage with the machine
Charlie Warzel (@cwarzel) had this nice post here about his initial subscriber numbers and why it is orders of magnitude lower than that of Glenn Greenwald (aka rage generating provocateur). It is a great post and I recommend you to read that (I will wait)
Charlie mentions that he will not stoop down to writing outrage generating (extractive) posts even though he admits that is a easy way to increase subscriptions. It is a noble act but a very difficult one. It is even more difficult when his readers are contacting him to write such extractive posts. It takes lot of mental strength to throw away easy money.
Unfortunately not everyone is like Charlie. There is a lot of (understandable) coverage of Fox News, OAN and similar outlets who have political commentators who do nothing but generate outrage and make millions of $ from it. There is a lot of demand for outrage. Supply meets demand and serves raging content that audience is asking for.
It is easy to justify why there is demand for outrage. Just like all other harmful things (excessive consumption of sugar, fast food, cigarettes, dangerous drugs) outrage driven media gives us instant pleasure. And these suppliers exploit that because there is a lot of money to make from it. To be fair there is a lot of outrage driven media on the left too but it is fair to say that it is multiple orders of magnitude less than it is on the right.
Unfortunately it has become very easy for outrage launderers to be accepted by “mainstream media”. Look at how many NeverTrumpers (LincolnProject, Scaramucci, …) who supported GOP (and Trump for sometime) are embraced by mainstream media as soon as they wrote a rage filled tweet / book against Trump. Rick Scott who participated in 2020 Election Big Lie and still maintains ties with Trump was invited to @ThisWeekABC and wasn’t asked any questions about his participation in Big Lie and how that caused loss of multiple lives.
It has become increasingly lucrative to make money off of outrage and even easier to come clean. As long as this is the case there is no incentive for people not to generate abhorrent lies and make money off of it. We can’t expect everyone to be as selfless as Charlie Warzel when it comes to making money off of Outrage.
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