productised rage and its discontents

tidings of anger and joy

This started as a digression in Wednesday’s post, but it’s also a theme in the book. There are many reasons why so many people in the developed economies feel a sense of constant simmering impotent fury. But one of the more important ones is that there are a lot of intelligent middle class professionals whose bonuses depend on this being the case.

An analogy; consider the audience at a comedy club. You might ask why they are happy, and it would be an acceptable answer to say that they’re young, they’re middle class, they have disposable income and spare time and in general modern society is working for them and providing them with goods and services they enjoy consuming. But if you ask why they’re laughing, the reason is that there’s a guy at the front of the room telling them jokes.

The insight on which the fortune of Fox News was based is that a lot of people enjoy being angry (or at least, behave as if they do, which is all you need from a commerical point of view). And that there are some people who have a talent in making an audience angry in the same way that comedians are good at making them laugh.

Comedy is an unusual art form, because it’s got an objective outcome. No matter whether you personally like or dislike a comedian, if their audience is laughing then there is a measurable sense in which they did well, and vice versa. The comedians of rage also seem to be judged, objectively, on their ability to generate the chosen reaction in their audience. That might be why they are so well-paid - it was a source of wonder to me that a mid-tier wingnut Youtuber was on a $50m four year contract, which is significantly more than the chief executive of HSBC earns.

The development of productised rage is a big part of the story of the last twenty years, inn my view. And it’s an example of the way in which a system can get out of control when it becomes unregulated. If you take a look at the Fox News / Dominion court case, you can see the gradual realisation on the part of the media executives that they weren’t actually in the driving seat. They had created a feedback loop between rage and money, and the POSIWD (purpose of a system is what it does) principle had taken over.

Anyway, I’d usually be the last one to deny anyone their pleasures, but this one seems a bit destructive and not very enjoyable, so I’d advise against developing a taste for it. This is, in all probability, the last “Back of Mind” of 2023 - a happy Christmas and see you all in what I hope will be a prosperous new year.