Jonah and the Epidemic of Outrage
Slate Magazine dubbed 2014 “The Year of Outrage,”1 and I’m inclined to agree.
We were outraged when a London block installed anti-homeless spikes, and when Khloé Kardashian wore a Native American headdress.2 We were outraged when we read the Senate’s torture report outlining CIA practices of systematic prisoner abuse and we were outraged when we read about Lena Dunham’s childhood sexual experimentation.3 We were outraged by Bill Cosby; we were outraged by gentrification and income inequality; we were outraged by Ferguson; we were outraged by the Austin based “Strange Fruit PR” firm who foolishly chose a name that echoed a 1930’s Billie Holiday song about lynchings. We were outraged by Fox News and/or by Jon Stewart’s satire of Fox News. We were outraged by Rolling Stone’s UVA rape story, then we were outraged to find out that they got their facts wrong. We were outraged that iTunes gave away U2’s new album for free without asking us. And by “we” in all of these examples I mean something like “social media” or “the internet”—“the internet” construed as a kind of corporate consciousness and increasingly a corporate conscience.
