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March 29, 2024, 12:36:35 am

Author Topic: Outrage Culture  (Read 859 times)  Share 

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caffinatedloz

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Outrage Culture
« on: July 10, 2019, 06:00:40 pm »
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What is considered outrage culture? And is it an issue? How has the internet perpetuated this and what can be done to overcome it? Are there ways to not buy into outrage culture while still standing up for your beliefs and not becoming numb to issues within society?

I think that outrage culture can be seen in a very recent example of the internet jumping aboard the hate bus driving straight for James Charles, a 19-year-old. No matter what he was accused of, as he lost millions of subscribers, I couldn't help but feel awful. I felt, well outraged, at what he has supposedly done (not that I doubted it at the time). But more than that, I felt sympathetic. I could not stop myself from imagining what it would be like to feel that the whole world hated you. How would you function if everything that you had built for yourself suddenly came crumbling down? The accusations were awful, but so was the hate.

I think that it is evident that outrage culture is an issue that has definitely grown worse in a technology-driven age. Everyday people have a large platform and things are able to be quickly and easily spread with little vetting or checking. Accusations can be thrown out and shared with little or no proof. Some sites all publish the same thing and use each other as sources. Rumours are quickly shared and the idea that news must keep up leads to many mistakes in reporting; Mistakes and inconsistencies that the internet lends itself to. These would not have been found in traditional media to such a large extent. (There is also the counter-argument to this that traditional media did not give people a platform to refute accusations.)

As for how not to buy into outrage culture and maintain healthy levels of passion, I find that to be a constant balancing act that I never quite seem to perfect.

This post was inspired by some other posts I read on this board here and here.