Outrage for Sale: How Social Media Rebuilt Public Discourse
The web promised a democratization of voices. Instead, it built an economy where provocation is rewarded, shame is obsolete, and outrage has no audience left to offend.
Outrage has always been with us, but the public square once had limits. Today, those limits have dissolved. Through automation and segmentation, social media has turned anger into an efficient business model—and civility into a luxury few can afford.
Social Media’s Advertising Outrage Machine
The modern media environment is strikingly loud—and often mean. On YouTube and other social platforms, shows like The Line, The Whatever Podcast, and Surrounded, along with a growing roster of political commentators, have built lucrative businesses around confrontation. A common trope is the “gotcha” exchange: holding a caller’s feet to the fire for supporting one politician or another—with the same vigor Tim Russert once brought to Meet the Press’s Sunday interviews.
But the people on the receiving end are not senators or party leaders. They are ordinary callers, often unprepared and inarticulate, outmatched before the conversation even begins. The crescendo of these segments is humiliation—a moment that proves, for the audience, that the “other side” is composed of buffoons unworthy of serious thought. Far from holding the powerful to account, these shows transform politics into performance, where the highest prize is the public shaming of one’s opponents.
The shift over the past fifty years—from a culture that at least maintained the appearance of civility to one that cheers public humiliation—is not simply moral decline. In the age of mass media, when a host stepped “past the line,” advertisers faced real pressure to withdraw their support. That system was imperfect and often cynical, but it tethered brands to the tone of the programming they funded. The result was a feedback loop that discouraged spectacle. Today, that loop has broken.
From Outrage as Risk to Outrage as Strategy
The audience for this kind of content is neither universal nor dominant, but it is large, loyal, and easy to reach. Algorithms excel at corralling viewers into self-reinforcing circles, ensuring they see only what confirms their instincts. Outrage that once erupted into national debate now stays confined within smaller ecosystems. Those who find it objectionable rarely encounter it, and those who enjoy it never have to defend it. Outrage has become safer—less a risk than a strategy. Within these contained markets, it is both sustainable and profitable, while advertisers are often unaware of what their dollars ultimately endorse.
Social Media: A Perfect Advertising Institution
Even when a social media platform tries to reverse this trend, it faces the same economic trap as everyone else. Efforts to promote civility or long-form discussion inevitably lead to lower engagement, shorter sessions, and reduced ad revenue. The very platforms that enable outrage are captive to the same incentive structure that fuels it.
Advertising once relied on expensive, broad exposure—television, newspapers, billboards—all built on appealing to mass audiences. Social media inverted that logic. Where advertisers once needed millions of viewers to find a few thousand customers, they can now reach those customers directly. Automated, real-time bidding has made the process cheaper, faster, and more precise. Small firms can reach their niches; large ones can track returns instantly.
Content has adapted to this logic. Measured, nuanced commentary is the cultural equivalent of kale: good for you but rarely craved. Declarative, righteous commentary delivers the dopamine hit that keeps people scrolling. On an infinite digital canvas, the “next man up”—the creator willing to shout louder or strike harder—quickly captures the attention that quieter voices leave behind. TikTok’s short vertical videos have made outrage portable: perfectly tailored for a few seconds of attention, impossible for television or radio to match.
The result is a self-perpetuating cycle. Outrage floods the zone while audience segmentation makes backlash nearly impossible. Brands can sell to anyone, anywhere, in real time, through content that spans the ideological spectrum—from conspiratorial channels to uncompromising partisans. Algorithms ensure that consumers rarely see either the offending content or the advertisers underwriting it.
Opting out offers no easy refuge. Any advertiser that rejects this system faces higher costs, weaker reach, and—ironically—greater brand risk. The incentives are so tightly aligned that restraint has become a competitive disadvantage. Reinforcing the cycle, Americans prize free expression—not just freedom from government restriction, but the cultural norm that everyone should have a platform. Within that framework, deplatforming is brief and reserved for only the most extreme cases.
The Field Widens
Traditional media has not escaped the pull. Cable news has absorbed the rhythm of social media: faster exchanges, sharper contrasts, and more visible conflict. The incentives differ, but the gravitational field is the same. In a culture attuned to outrage, restraint looks out of touch.
Thirty years ago, politics was said to be played “between the forty-yard lines.” There were fierce arguments, but the field of acceptable discourse was relatively narrow. Today, the conversation stretches goal line to goal line. The boundaries of public debate have expanded—not because outrage is newly rewarded, but because the systems that once punished it no longer work. Outrage has always drawn attention, but it used to carry risk: advertisers pulled support, reputations suffered, audiences turned away. Those feedback mechanisms have dissolved. The public’s broad disapproval rarely translates into consequences, leaving outrage free to multiply without resistance.
The institutions of media and advertising have aligned to make this possible. Each actor—creator, platform, advertiser, viewer—behaves rationally within its incentives. Together, they have built a structure that normalizes noise. It is not a conspiracy, nor even a failure. It is simply a system doing what systems do: optimizing for what it measures.
The result is a politics that feels broader, sharper, and more divided—not because we’re shouting louder, but because the field itself has grown so wide that every voice now echoes from its own end zone.
Social media is today’s Tower of Babel.