Turning Anger into Cash

Chris Martin ponders the mercenary nature of Twitter outrage and “trial by hashtag.”

Rage generates pageviews far more than reason, and pageviews are how these people make money.

As long as you’re on social media and clicking links like the ones above, you’re contributing to the epidemic. Pageviews generate money, rage-tweets and shocklines drive pageviews, and reason loses.

Russell Moore seconds the point:

The louder and more frantic the anger, the more we feel as though we’re really showing conviction and grit.

This is made all the more problematic when it’s easy to make a living out of perpetual rage, even if the only media outlet one has is a Twitter or Facebook feed. After all, nothing signals conviction and passion in this age more than the art of being theatrically offended.

Now of course, being offended at everyone else’s taking offense can also turn into its own art. And as these articles point out, what’s worthy of offense is usually dictated by social media consensus rather than careful reason. The article with the extreme headline or accusatory conclusion will get more page views than thoughtful nuance, which then creates financial incentives for additional voices to express anger. You could almost say that outrage is hired out. That alone should make the thoughtful Christian very suspicious of social media warriors and zero-sum hashtags.