The Perpetual Outrage Machine
- seedspeed57
- Nov 17, 2014
- 3 min read
We’ve all been in conversations with people where it gradually becomes clear they aren’t listening to anything you have to say, they’re just waiting for their turn to speak in order to pontificate on whatever subject has recently grabbed their attention. It’s usually something they’re pissed off about, something they just have to get off their chest. Eventually you stop talking and start nodding, realizing what you thought was a dialog is in fact a monologue. Or, more often than not, an angry tirade.
Welcome to every conversation on the Internet.
The Internet is where people go to get their daily dose of righteous indignation. It’s become the wall we punch, the pillow we scream into, the asshole we flip off behind its back. It’s a safe zone where we can heap abuse on people we dislike without fear of consequence - the odds are very low the person you called a fuckface in the comments section of the Huffington Post or A.V. Club is going to sock you in the nose.
As a result the Internet has become a perpetual outrage machine - an infinite source of insult, rage and blame that can seemingly sustain itself forever. Or at least as long as there are liberals and conservatives, Christians and atheists, my sports team and your sports team. (For the record: Your sports team? Fuckfaces.)
This means we’ve all become the person in the conversation waiting for the pause in order to bitch. We no longer ‘speak with’ but ‘talk at.’ We mount our high horse which is balancing on a soap box and let fly - lecturing an endless sea of fellow speechmakers who are shouting too loudly to hear anyone else.
Unless, that is, they pay just enough attention to become offended.
Offense is outrage’s sanctimonious sibling. Offense is the pooper at every party, always ready to clutch its pearls and suffer an attack of the vapors at the mention of any topic it deems sensitive or inappropriate. Offense appoints itself the moral compass, the arbiter of good taste, the champion of the downtrodden. Offense is a humorless scold with a stick so far up its ass there are splinters in its uvula. Offense just got mad at my use of the word ‘uvula,’ thinking it’s something sexual.
I’m not talking about occasional offense, aimed at truly despicable words or deeds. I’m talking about those people who use their own delicate sensibilities as a weapon against anyone they don’t agree with. The habitually offended have increasingly begun to demand public apologies from those who’ve made statements they find objectionable. Sometimes this is warranted, but as people become more easily offended there are demands to apologize for seemingly every public utterance.
It’s at this point I call bullshit.
Feigned offense has become the cynical tool the perpetually outraged use to shame and humiliate their ‘enemies.’ To force those you disagree with to issue an apology not only serves as petty revenge, but undermines them - making their beliefs and opinions seem like something shameful requiring an act of contrition. Too often publicists, handlers and political advisors convince the targets of these campaigns to give in, issuing apologies every bit as insincere as their accuser’s indignation. Only the most partisan blockheads believe a victory has been achieved, or an injustice made right.
So we’re trapped in the perpetual outrage machine, which is kept in motion by false offense and non-apologies. The problem is, when everything is deemed offensive it becomes harder and harder to separate the truly despicable from the easy targets. A famous comedian making an insensitive joke is given more weight than a botched execution in Oklahoma. A football player shit-talking his opponent after a big game creates a greater outcry than evidence of sex-trafficking rings in major American cities. A fan favorite being voted off American Idol is treated as a bigger tragedy than 21,000 people worldwide dying from hunger every single day.
When we fake outrage, we become outraged over fake things. We become the boy who cried "apologize!" And the people who are engaged in genuinely outrageous activities with a real human cost are allowed to tiptoe past, unheeded and ignored, and inflict actual, lasting harm.
Now that's offensive.
