Outrage Is A Brand

But today, too often, genuine disagreement quickly gives way to intense distrust.  We spend far more time trying to convict one another than we do developing our own convictions.

Being against someone has more currency than being for anything.  Each of us has found ourselves operating on the wrong side of this equation from time to time.

All of this gets amplified by technology, with an incentive structure that preys on people's fears, and algorithms that play on anger.  Outrage is a brand.

And, as with anything that gets marketed, it gets scaled up.

It becomes more industrialized, more cold, and more unfeeling.

-- Speaker of the House Paul Ryan (R-WI), in his farewell address, 19 December 2018