The internet is angrier than the Hulk after he’s been kicked in the balls. Social media gave us the incredible ability to connect with a much larger portion of humanity than we’d ever been able to before. Did this build bridges? It certainly did, but bridges are just as capable of facilitating the movement of tanks as ambulances.
Some of the outpouring of vitriol online came about naturally; it’s inevitable when you take a number of people with polarised views, give them all a soapbox, and then essentially shut them in a room with each other. It’s like locking a dozen angry bears in a shipping container.
But some of it – I’d go as far as to say most of it – is manufactured. The anger was stoked deliberately, the flames engorged by the bellows of corporate need and political want.
A factory of fury
You may think I’m talking here about solitary figures on the fringes of politics, or even those nearer the centre whom you’d think should know better. But unfortunately our media now plays a huge role in this, and this is largely because the internet changed how we access information and, more importantly, what we pay for or don’t.
You see, for a long time news organisations used their websites to supplement their papers, which were the primary source of news and revenue. This meant they were free to access.
But as the internet grew and evolved and digital began to steal market share from print journalism, these news organisations were left with a prickly problem. People could just read all the news on their website for free and not bother buying their paper.
This didn’t happen in the early days of the internet, because by the time you’d connected to the web in order to find out what time the football starts, the match was already over.
News sites have tried to monetise themselves through paywalls, but a lot of people don’t want to pay for something they used to get for free. Human beings are naturally loss-averse and, no matter how much it may make sense to financially support the people bringing you your news and fuelling your understanding of the world, this seems like a bum deal.
It’s like someone turning up and claiming they want more money for the house you bought off them ten years ago to cover ‘wall inflation’.
Which leaves ads as the primary source of revenue for many news sites. The problem with this model, though, is that you need a lot of people coming to your website to justify charging brands a lot of money to advertise there. It’s the same reason you can’t put up a billboard in your cat’s litter tray and become an advertising mogul.
Rage baiting
And how do you get the most traffic to your website? It’d be nice if I could say here that the answer was ‘with conscientious, factual reporting’. But I think you guessed it wasn’t going to be that.
No, the best way to get eyeballs on your website is with something shocking or outrageous. We humans are emotional creatures, with a preference for negativity at that. Facts and objectivity, therefore, just don’t cut through the noise. What does is scandal.
Which is why large portions of our media now dedicate a lot of their time to pissing us off and stirring up moral outrage.
The news is nuanced
You may wonder how all this is possible. The news is just the news, right? Even though editorial bias means different papers will report on different stories sometimes, or the same stories from different angles, they’re still restrained by the facts, right? For the sake of saving a few thousand words let’s just say they are for the time being. But this is where the humble Opinion section really earns it’s keep.
You can say what you want in the Opinion section. You just have to figure out who and what your audience hates, and who and what they love, and then write articles claiming the former is/are doing more of what makes them so hatable or that the latter is under threat (usually because of the former).
Hit publish, share on social media, and watch your rabid fan base explode with rage and self-righteousness, like a whale who’s accidentally swallowed a limpet mine. What do you know, you’ve got a ton of web traffic and that advertising revenue is rolling in. Rinse and repeat.
How to reclaim control of the narrative
So what can you do about all this? When the people controlling the narrative have set out to enrage you?
Well, the first step is being wise to their game. Recognise those articles, those headlines that make your blood boil, as nothing more than an attempt to tease you. The journalistic equivalent of kids sticking their tongues out at each other across the playground.
In order to do this well you need to understand your own biases. Bias is often used as a bad word, but in this context it just means ‘what subjects, topics or causes do you value the most?’ What are the easiest ways someone can push your buttons?
Secondly, you need to remember that all of this commentary is just people’s opinions. And, in fact, it’s probably not even their opinions. These articles are constructed to appeal to their core audience and enrage those outside of it. They are cynical in their content, their perspective, and their execution. Don’t attribute any more value to them than you would a spray-painted cock on a wheelie-bin.
Thirdly, imagine yourself getting angry, and then realise that that’s what they want you to do. If you just ignore it, the joke’s on them. They want to turn you into a rabid, frothing manic who boosts their article, fuelling the profitable controversy for them with your shares and your outraged response. Instead, behave like an intelligent, grown-up human being and leave the idiots to it. You’re better than that.
Breaking the cycle
All of these may be difficult. After all, they’re baiting you. The whole point of baiting is that it’s tempting. Something would be pretty rubbish as bait if it didn’t attract your attention, like using an old S Club 7 album to catch sharks.
But ask yourself what good it’ll really do? Our reaction only validates the practice. If people stopped taking the bait and these articles started falling flat, news sites would give up on them. As a result, we’d all be a lot more level-headed and a lot less angry.
Perhaps then we could stop seeing each other as the enemy, and learn to pick our fights more strategically.
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Header photo by Dušan veverkolog on Unsplash
