WHY ARE WE SO ANGRY?
Outrage has become the defining emotion of the 21st Century, worn righteously, as a finger-pointing badge of honour. From the backlash against Yorkshire Tea, when Conservative politician Rishi Sunak was photographed with a packet of it in February this year, to the outrage from both sides over Brexit, the Twitter hordes are waiting, spring-loaded, to call out anyone who is ideologically opposed to them. Anger is being baited, owned and exalted like never before.
“THE OUTRAGE AND THE HUNGRY BAYING FOR BLOOD – OFTEN WITH SCANT ATTENTION TO CONTEXT – HAS BECOME A DISTURBING PHENOMENON”
No matter where you stand on each individual case, the outrage and the hungry baying for blood – often with scant attention being paid to context, and with no compassion for someone who may have made a mistake in 280 characters or less – has become a disturbing phenomenon. Sitting anonymously on a bus, anyone with a smartphone has the power to bully, hurl abuse, humiliate and belittle. So is this knee-jerk anger and polarising aggression in danger of seeping out from beyond our screens and into real, flesh-and-blood life? Or, perhaps more disturbingly, are online platforms merely holding a mirror to what was
