The Problem With Outrage Culture
I’m done with outrage. I’m burnt out from the name-calling, the witch hunts, the misrepresentations; the cornucopia of shouty bollocks that social media facilitates so well. I just can’t do it anymore.
I get nostalgic a lot these days. Nostalgic for my childhood, nostalgic for the 90s, and nostalgic for the time when words had meanings. If you’d told me in 2005 that you worked with a bloke named Terry who was a “Nazi”, I’d have been shocked and confused - wondering how exactly a vicious bigot covered in swastika tattoos managed to get a job in marketing. But if you told me the same thing nowadays, I’d simply take it to mean that Terry had a sense of humour.
The criteria for Nazism have widened considerably over the last decade. Forget invading Poland; these days you’re a Nazi if you oppose men in dresses invading women’s bathrooms. Or if you do anything whatsoever with your hands and arms. Speaking recently at Trump’s inauguration, Elon Musk pressed his hand to his heart, then extended it out to the crowd in a gesture of solidarity. It took mere minutes for the screams and wails to ring forth across America: “THIS IS WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU GIVE NAZIS POWER!” Actually, no. This is what happens when you put autistic people in social situations. They do something awkward, people get angry, and the autistic person walks away oblivious, thinking they’ve crushed it. Much like when a dog pisses on the carpet, then happily bounds out of the room, blissfully unaware of having ruined their owner’s day.
If Trump and Musk are Nazis, and their supporters likewise, that means the United States is now home to around 77 million committed fascists. Hitler’s ghost would be punching the air in celebration - until he realises how much of this group is composed of Jews, Latinos and Black people. Then he’d be scrambling to get them all into “reeducation camps”, which is ironically what the Democrats wish they could do.
The only people I’m suspicious of nowadays are those who haven’t been described as “problematic”. Particularly those who believe they’re on “the right side of history”. How can you know that unless you can see into the future? And if you can, why are you wasting your time on X and not putting all your money into Fart Coin, ready to rake in the millions? (If you’re over the age of 23, google ‘Fart Coin’ and thank / hate me later).
In the future, everyone will be far-right for 15 minutes. All of these terms - ‘fascist’, ‘racist’, ‘misogynist’ etc. - have become essentially meaningless. Which is a tragedy, because words matter. If we can’t agree on their meaning, how can we move forward? How can I debate someone who sincerely believes that Ben Shapiro is a Nazi, notwithstanding the yarmulke on his head? Honestly, the guy’s more Jewish than Adam Sandler frying latkes in a synagogue, while discussing his investment portfolio.
Language is how we describe reality. And if you believe that everyone around you is a racist, homophobic misogynist then you’re clearly not living in the real world. Unless you happen to be in Iran, in which case you may have a point. But even then, you’d be ignoring all those who loathe and oppose the nonsense pumped out by the Ayatollah’s regime.
All of us need to do better, myself included. Not everyone who disagrees with me is “woke” (another term with an ever more confused and contested meaning). We need to listen to each other’s experiences with more care and attention, to better understand why we hold the views we do. And note that I’ve said “experience”, not “lived experience”. If you’ve had an experience, you’ve lived it - that’s how experiences work. The “lived” is as redundant as if you put the word “furious” before “lesbian”; there’s simply no need. I can forgive people for many things, but when it comes to grammar I really am a Nazi - and bloody proud of it.
Outrage and the insults you mention are largely used by lefty’s to establish control from their supposed moral high ground. You’ve got to forgive them it is after all the best they can do.
It does get tiring and exhausting to have to deal with ignorant people. But someone calls you a Nazi for disagreeing with what is in vogue, simply ask them to discuss what nazism was during the 1920s-1940s and ask them for specific examples; very likely you will not get any and be yelled at some more. This is one of the end results of the decimation of history education in the west in favor of “social studies,” no one even knows what real Nazis did and how they have mostly nothing to do with the squabbles in America today. It does cheapen the words and makes people just shrug their shoulders instead of take a serious look at the accusations. The moral of the story is that people need to educate themselves because schools and social media won’t do it for you. When someone calls you a Nazi or one of the “isms,” just walk away and pity them, that’s all you can do for the most part; you can’t save them, they have to save themselves.