Awareness and outrage

[darkemeralds]

I've been thinking about outrage. Outrage is fun! It must be. Otherwise, why do I engage in it? (I just noticed that I even have a tag for it.)

If you feel strong, check out the search term "political outrage" in Google image search, and note your physical reaction. For me, it's a concentrated dose of what the rest of this post is about.



Why do I seek out opportunities to be annoyed, indignant, judgmental, critical or angry? Why, when it goes against my principles and my beliefs, do I read what trolls have to say? Why does my Twitter timeline include anyone who's pissed off all the time (and why do I ever tweet about things like bad customer service)? Why do I click on Buzzfeed article links? Why do I ever go to Facebook, ever?

I'm beginning to think it's an actual addiction. Outrage gives me a little rush, a little reward. If I pay attention, I can feel it--a drop of dopamine in the bloodstream cocktail, a touch of stress-relief.

The trouble is, the stress has to come first: there's no need for indignation if something doesn't activate fight-or-flight in the first place. For instance, if I'm terrified by an article about the hit-and-run killing of a bike-rider, outrage makes my fear tolerable. I already ride as safely as I can and there's not a fucking thing I can do about the dead bicyclist or the cowardly driver, so what's left? Outrage, that's what. It's soothing.

But is that soothed feeling so compelling that I'm actually seeking out the stressor first? Am I causing myself pain in order to get the painkiller?

Over the years, I've built a cushion around my hair-trigger trauma response, and it has saved my life. I can't afford to erode it with voluntary exposure to things that I know will outrage me. But it's surprisingly hard to quit. Sure, it's better to be in a habitual state of grace, but a hit of outrage is so much easier to score, you know? It's like a sugar rush compared to the long-term health benefits of vegetables and exercise.

I don't think total ignorance in the name of self-care is the answer, either. I'd be a bad citizen and a poor member of the human tribe if I tried to abstain completely from all potentially triggering information and ideas. There are always new issues, new points of view, and a shifting social landscape to be aware of. At a minimum, I'd like to avoid being part of the problem, even if I can't solve it.

But I do need to take care of myself first. Recognizing that my tolerance for activation is extremely low, I have to notice triggers and take action before I fall into the outrage response:

• Stop reading
• Close that tab
• Walk away
• Delete before posting
• Don't start writing that comment in the first place
• Don't stop to gawk
• Turn to something else (like funny Youtube videos)
• Respect myself and my limits
• Know when feeling cowardly now is going to prevent feeling crazy later and be okay with that
• Unfollow this person
• Heed that gut feeling
• Pay attention
• Take care of myself

.

Comments

[sasha_feather]

That is good advice.

[darkemeralds]

Now to implement!

[macaron62]

wonderful advice to self! I hope that you can take care of yourself. I find that I am all emotion in these situations, when I should be more cognition. When will I learn??? Good luck!

[darkemeralds]

Thank you. My own emotional hair-trigger has toughened up quite a bit with age--a fact that I'm grateful for all the time--but yeah, it's still an effort to force cognition over reaction a lot of the time. It's a work in progress, forever, I'm sure.

[azurelunatic]

Those sound like excellent and self-compassionate steps.

[darkemeralds]

Self-compassion is a nice way of putting it. Useful term--thanks!

[scribblemoose]

I really empathise with this. When I have a lot of stress in my life I go looking for things to get angry about. I watch stupid reality programmes and yell at the screen. I go troll hunting online. I am drawn in to stupid, pointless arguments and, as you say, become part of the problem. And all the while I'm eating carbs and sugar which literally feeds the outrage (and is a form of self-harming, when I think about it.

My counsellor has pointed out that this is a way of turning the anger against myself. It's not cathartic in the way that ranting to friends (my poor friends!), or writing feelings down, or going for a good stompy walk is. It becomes a vicious circle instead. And the next step from there is the dark place.

I'm working on noticing what's going on instead: when I get that urge I look at my feelings, and acknowledge them, and take a healthy option to deal with them. It's hard. But I know the other way just isn't going to help.

Wishing you all the love and support in the world, my dear.

[darkemeralds]

OMG, yes, the near-irresistible urge for carbs and sugar! That's a huge consequence of this particular triggering for me, too. And it's the oddest thing, but knowing that's what's happening doesn't help stop it once it's triggered. The susceptibility to outrage grows, and then the carb cravings increase, and it's a spiral.

I've been thinking all day about your idea that this is self-harm. I honestly had never discovered that nuance. I think of self-harm as a category of more concrete things like cutting (which I had only the briefest brush with in my adolescence), but of course you're quite right. Why, when I have at least some choice, would I choose to go troll-hunting online, unless out of an urge to harm myself? Thinking of it that way is really useful for me--really puts it into a new perspective.

I don't say it often enough, but on Twitter and here, I take so much courage and strength from you. Thank you.

[greghatcher]

I've often remarked that there is a HUGE free-floating ball of outrage in the world of fandom, in particular... there MUST be some sort of recreational component to it because it's always there and it's so popular. All us regular columnists at CBR joke about it-- my colleague Greg Burgas calls it 'poking the bear.' I can slave over 2500 words of considered, thoughtful analysis of this or that pop culture phenomenon, or research some odd little backwater of comics history, and get nothing but crickets-- but if I carelessly toss off something about how DC is clearly screwing up BATMAN or how Alan Moore is right to dismiss comics fans as obsessed man-children, I am SWARMED. In fact, it's happening right now-- Brian is doing a look back on "Emerald Twilight," a Green Lantern story from TWENTY YEARS ago and the place is getting spammed with people who are still enraged about it. As it happens I know the guy who wrote that story and we've spoken about it; he still can't believe that people are that pissed off.

The weird thing is, this outrage is only ever over FICTIONAL people. Nobody wants to talk about the ongoing culture of sexual harassment and anti-feminism, no one wants to talk about how Marvel and DC have been regularly screwing creators out of their royalties for decades-- in fact, when I wrote about how Bill Finger got betrayed by his partner on BATMAN back in 1939, I had people lining up to scream at me about how he deserved it and he should have been grateful just to have a job.... the subtext being, 'how dare you even suggest that the health and welfare of the fictional Batman was less important than the health and welfare of the actual living human that created him.'

There's a culture of outrage and an industry that's sprung up to feed it-- hell, that's Ann Coulter's whole career-- and there's also a weird sort of fan-entitlement culture that has been fed by the internet, and these two things have been heterodyning into something really nasty over the last decade or so. And as you've said above, I am afraid that the only cure for it is for sane people to just walk away.

[darkemeralds]

What a fascinating insight, about fictional people provoking outrage. I suspect that there's a Dunbar's Number component to this in fandom: we make up our tribe of 150 out of a few known, real people, several less-real online connections, and a whole host of characters from media--and to some extent the actors who have played those characters. It makes sense, in that context, that some people would feel all the "start a feud" feelings over Batman that they'd feel about an extended family member's honor (or whatever) if we still lived in extended families, and not give a crap about some abstract group like "women" or some author or artist they don't "know."

None of which is to excuse the kind of behavior you describe, but it's an interesting theoretical explanation.

My desultory research for this post led me to loads of recent articles and a couple of books on the subject of manufacturing political outrage, as is the stock in trade of Ann Coulter and her ilk, of course. I started to feel polarized and outraged just reading about the articles and books, so I decided it was in the best interests of my mental health not to read further. One of the least triggering and most interesting pieces I found on the subject is David Brin's 2005 "An Open Letter to Researchers of Addiction, Brain Chemistry, and Social Psychology, because he simply asks science to study the neurochemistry of outrage as a form of "self-doping"--which is how I experience it myself.

The Bill Finger article is fascinating! I notice your own comment got a lot of pushback from people who really do seem to be a) defending a personal friend or relative; b) using well-worn talking points; and c) deliberately misconstruing the entire article they're commenting on.

I had to look up heterodyne. "Heterodyning" is a great term!

[kis]

I think I'm the opposite. Outrage upsets me - particularly the trollish type. I can very easily take it personally, even when it's not directed at me. Which is possibly even less healthy than seeking it out! Probably both approaches stem from a need to feel 'right'? Because being Right seems to offer safety? Joining together in outrage can be validating, but it can quickly slide into bullying too - as all the Fails have shown. Then again, outrage against actual injustice, if directed into action, is a way of making the world better ... so I guess the answer is to choose your battles wisely.

[darkemeralds]

Other people's outrage upsets me, too. My own outrage has a slightly different tone quality to it, but the two so frequently happen in tandem that I'm not sure I could tease them apart: someone expresses outrage over something on the internet, and I feel differently about the subject, so I feel outrage over their outrage...I mean, there's a downward spiral for you.

Trollish outrage certainly seems to spring from a need to feel "right," but I suspect that the underlying fight-flight-scream-swear-verbally-abuse reaction you see in comment threads has a threatened component. I can feel it more clearly than I can put it into words.

It was (of course) some Failcry incidents that first really taught me how easily triggered I am by outrage. Once some of it was directed at me in a personal way, I became so allergic to it that I had to cut off whole swaths of my internet life. I didn't actually close accounts and disappear, but I sure put up some blocks and walls, and developed some hard and fast rules about internet streets I will and won't walk down, and internet people I will and won't interact with. Plenty of people have been "encouraged" by various Failcry events to commit digital suicide, deleting themselves from the internet. As you say, outrage bleeds very quickly into bullying, and that, as we know, can encourage sensitive people to commit actual suicide.

It's a bigger issue than I started out being conscious of for this post. I'm so glad I wrote it, though. Good insights in the comments! :D

PS I love your icon! Beautiful!