OutRage Roaches
When social media gets on my last nerve…
by Floyd Webb
Look yall, all of us need less social media.
You can live without it.
You don’t know where any of the crap that outrages you comes from, it’s like having roaches in your house. Instead of eliminating them, you feed them and all the conditions that invited them into the crib in the first place place. And you keep cussing and stomping but not keeping the kitchen clean.
At the very least, stop feeding yourself this kind of nonsense. The whole game is built around “them” and “they”—keeping people separated, suspicious, and angry.
The first enemy of oppressed people is self-hatred. And quiet as it’s kept, white supremacy or any supremacy ideology doesn’t really work for most of the people who believe in them either. Other than the small elite that profits from them, everyone pays a price. Some are taught to feel inferior. Others are taught they’re superior. Both are lies, and both leave people disconnected from their own humanity.
Right behind that comes illiteracy, lack of critical thinking, and the self-loathing that grows from both.
Most people who think they’re independent thinkers are actually waiting for someone else to tell them what to think next.
The critical point is this: before you can think for yourself, you have to learn how to think. That’s where critical thinking comes in.
How many times do people have to be told that there are entire troll farms and marketing operations full of paid individuals whose job is to create the most deceptive, inflammatory, divisive, rage-baited ng content possible? In some places the managers and owners literally track engagement metrics, have their farm workers compete for attention, and are rewarded when their posts go viral.
Outrage isn’t a bug. It’s the product.
I won’t even repeat the subject or post that initiated this response, because repeating it only feeds the machine. Every click, every share, every angry response rewards the algorithm and gives it exactly what it wants.
Sometimes the most radical thing you can do is refuse to participate. Read a book. Go outside. Talk to an actual human being. Your mind will thank you for it.
Further Reading
Freire, Paulo. Pedagogy of the Oppressed. New York: Continuum, 1970.
Postman, Neil. Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business. New York: Penguin Books, 1985.
Herman, Edward S., and Noam Chomsky. Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media. New York: Pantheon Books, 1988.
Rushkoff, Douglas. Program or Be Programmed: Ten Commands for a Digital Age. Berkeley, CA: Soft Skull Press, 2010.
Pariser, Eli. The Filter Bubble: What the Internet Is Hiding from You. New York: Penguin Press, 2011.
McRaney, David. How Minds Change: The Surprising Science of Belief, Opinion, and Persuasion. New York: Portfolio, 2022.
Phillips, Whitney. This Is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things: Mapping the Relationship Between Online Trolling and Mainstream Culture. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2015.
Disconnecting is easier than we think. The outrage producers also peddle the belief that iwe're addicted but if I can quit cigarettes, I can absolutely ditch social media for at least a few hours a day.
Thank you for writing and sharing what 'should be' common sense and common knowledge. I turned off the news over a decade ago and have limited my social media to Substack and even within Substack I limit tremendously what I consume. I refuse to feel the fear they are trying to instill and I refuse to think most of my countrymen are beasts (thought that gets harder every day) I continue to look for the good, the rational, the kind, the compassionate...and every day, I still find plenty of evidence that these people still exist. Thank you.