Outrage

You're yelling at the wrong phone!

Outrage is the general term for content promoted by social media algorithms designed to trigger an angry or fearful response and maximize the addiction of the user to the platform.

There are many different kinds of outrage content.

• Political content that distorts and amplifies the most extreme and ignorant voices
• People being assholes or doing stupid shit in general
• Racism, misogyny, and other hate speech
• Exaggerated dangers to health, person or property
• Outrageous lies and unbelievable things (flat earth, qanon, bigfoot)
• Clickbait
• Trolling
• Propaganda intentionally spread by foreign governments amplifies all of the above

This type of content elicits a greater reaction than other content because we have a natural instinct to seek out and shame outrageous behavior in society to enforce cultural norms, taboos, and conformity. It feels good to call an asshole an asshole, and hopefully their shame will cause them to try and be a better person in the future.

In the close communities where we evolved that system works pretty well. People who were trolls back then were literally sent to live under a bridge.

However, on social media, outrage generates clicks, and therefore revenue. And the people who are doing the outrageous things are not ostracized, they are monetized. This creates a terrible feedback loop where more and more people are influenced by the outrage, they see assholes making money, and they say "I can be an asshole too" instead of just wanting to get away from those people as you would if you met them in person.

For an in-depth scientific analysis of outrage porn, there's this article from the Journal of Ethics and Social Philosophy: Moral Outrage Porn by C. Thi Nguyen and Bekka Williams