Gimme OUTRAGE!

Dear reader – you don’t know what you’re talking about. And I mean that in the nicest possible way. We are all victims of a media environment that favours sensationalism and opinion ahead of facts and analysis. Why? Because sensationalism sells and facts are boring. The commercial reality of running a publication means you need paying subscribers to cover your costs and return a dividend. Being relevant and interesting isn’t enough. You need to dive into psychology to get the real returns.

Back in the mid-20^th Century, B.F. Skinner ran a series of experiments involving rats and pigeons that would probably fail today’s ethical standards, but which are landmarks in behavioural psychology. He found the link between mental stimulation and physical reward is the most important driver of behaviour. His lab animals responded to flashing lights and sounds when they performed certain behaviors like pecking coloured dots or pushing buttons. The action was rewarded by a treat or even direct stimulation of the pleasure centres in their brains.

Humans work the same, but what Skinner couldn’t see was the link between hormones and the physical action. In humans the buzz we get from adrenaline and other hormones is a powerful motivating force. Think sex, sport, music, sky diving – whatever turns you on basically. The same with stress – it produces a similar buzz as your body reacts by readying you for fight or flight. That’s the one that media operatives have homed in on to drive the copy sales and clicks.

What is your reaction when you read a page of text outlining a series of facts and scholarly analysis of a specific issue? Boredom at best, right? You want to skip to the click bait with the half naked people or jump to the sports section. Most of us don’t even get past the headline.

In the 1970s Rupert Murdoch and others were cynical enough to start deliberately manipulating their readers by running headlines that not only jumped out at you to grab your attention, but covered topics that people were most likely to get off on. Mostly sex, but also political scandals, celebrity gossip and all the rest we are now surrounded by every minute of the day. They got people hooked, and those publishers made a gazillion out of it.

It would be innocent enough if they had just stuck with the titillation, but the problem was that a lot of these publishers were running a strict political agenda as well. Almost always right wing and focused on exploiting people’s fears of all the various isms, xenophobia, big brother, conspiracies and all the other juicy stuff you can’t see but love to think is real. It has now developed to the point where people can be manipulated in close to real time. You don’t even need words now – just a bunch of angry emojis in the comments is enough to rile people up.

It's all down to the buzz people get from outrage. Outrage gets people going like nothing else. That feeling that you have the righteous justification to take action and crush the forces of evil. You are your own superhero. The problem is that you actually become the force of evil when there is no reality behind it. You are promoting the lie, building the conspiracy, breathing life into the zombie apocalypse.

Despite the obvious danger, right wing media like Fox, Newsmax etc are now competing with each other to see who can pump out the most outrageous shit to their adrenaline junkie audiences. They can hear the howl every time they open the juicy headline and the watch the angry cable presenters personifying OUTRAGE! Then it is picked up by their competitors and amplified so that the howl becomes a ROAR and people start getting motivated to DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT! Whatever it is. Look at January 6^th 2021 for a direct link between the hysteria in social media and an attempted coup based on … absolutely nothing other than feelings, conspiracies and outright lies.

Who cares about the facts – facts are for geeks and wimps and they are probably made up by the ‘enemy’ anyway, right? All those lefty academics that want to destroy our way of life with their science and global thinking. The audience are the true believers, they are getting the skinny on the scams, they are the militia, the forces for good, the real patriots.

Yes folks, it is a cluster fuck of hatred for profit, but we haven’t even got to the kicker yet. The kicker is that the right wing media companies fueling the outrage machine don’t even believe the stuff they are pumping out. They see their viewers as easy marks to drive their profits and run with the anger that will build into the next round of action and reaction. When Fox was sued by Dominion Software the texts that were exposed during discovery exposed what their beloved presenters REALLY thought about their audience. Something about their audience being like domestic terrorists that fuck their mothers or something along those lines. Look it up – it's online. Most of those cable presenters are more like actors, putting on the faux outrage for the bucks it pulls in. Someone like Tucker Carlson has a background of privilege and education. His pose as the voice of the grass roots real America is as fake as his devotion to the right wing cause. Sure he’s a Republican, but he can’t stand Trump. They just have a symbiotic relationship that satisfies their desire for wealth and power through maintaining the hysteria of OUTRAGE!

For a couple of glaring example of this whole phenomenon, look no further than these. Firstly, the assassination attempt on Trump. When that happened everyone was expecting the shooter to be a deranged left wing vigilante taking out the criminal candidate, like Spiderman with a sniper rifle. I was expecting it to spark a right wing feeding frenzy with riots and militia reprisals across the states snowballing into the much drooled over (in right wing media) civil war. But no. Turns out the kid at the centre of it came from a hardcore Trump loving, gun toting family and himself was noted for his conservatism by his classmates. On top of that, he had a hit list of potential targets that included the Democratic National Convention and any foreign visitor that came within range. Trump just happened to be first and closest. Once that came out officially, the story faded away like gun smoke in a fairground. There wasn’t sufficient OUTRAGE to continue it, so once the fake ear bandages at the Republican National Convention came off, so did the story. But you can bet it will be in the back pocket for future disinformation support. It’s too good an opportunity to let die completely.

Second example comes from Britain – the home of tabloid OUTRAGE and manipulation. When another deranged kid went on a stabbing spree at a pre-school dance class, disinformation that the attacker was an illegal immigrant was picked up in social media and amplified by various ‘news’ websites leading to riots in the streets and a fiery attack on an accommodation centre housing refugees. Turns out the kid was from Wales, but by then the damage had been done and the hydra was out of its cage, living on OUTRAGE and fueled by lies that weirdly originated in Pakistan!

Unfortunately, gentle reader, there is nothing that can be done about this. The shit is so many layers deep that it will take generations to undo, even if there is a will to do it. This is how civilizations die. You can choose whether to help or hinder. This post isn’t going to give any easy way out – that is up to you, but as a starter I’d suggest taking a deep breath before you open any juicy headlines and to keep that breathing up when you feel the outrage start to flow. Altogether now – deep into your lungs, calm and even. That’s it. Now start thinking instead. As P-Funk say: it ain’t illegal yet.