Outrage Machine -- A Review

I remember reading Clay Shirky's "Here Comes Everybody" when the Internet was a relatively new thing, and enjoying the optimism. Since then, as I've watched the general decline of social media, I've often wondered how he'd update that book. Maybe he would have come up with "Outrage Machine." Maybe not. But I think a follow-up needs to be made that's better than this one.

Tobias Rose-Stockwell does an admirable job explaining to the layman what's occurred with social media to lead to the mess we've seen today. His solutions, however, are pedestrian and a bit disappointing if you ask me. On an individual basis, if applied, they could work fine. On a collective basis, it just leaves the public square even more open to the shouters, liars, and droolers. I'm all for individual action, but I think we're to that point that some kind of collective action is needed to claw the public space back from the crazies and the profiteers.

Absent in this book is any discussion with the social media titans about what they could do to help fix the problem. He appears to say the genie is out of the bottle and shrugs his shoulders at those in power doing anything to fix things. That's a serious flaw that permeates the book. What he suggests social media users do is fine -- although his solutions also have their flaws -- but dumping it all in the lap of social media users seems cowardly.

Fortunately, I have other guidelines I'm putting in place to help fix my social media interactions. This book is a small part of it, yes, but it's not much more than general advice without a call to action on the part of social media companies. Industrial polluters get CERCLA and RCRA, while social media polluters apparently get a "Get out of Jail Free" card from this author at least.

I tried summing up his solutions here, and I've added a few comments of my own:

Rose-Stockwell writes: "There are a handful of things we can do as humans to detoxify our relationship with online outrage, and our interactions with it online. Each of these are specific solutions that can help us reclaim portions of emotional agency that we have lost in recent years. Remember that this isn’t just for us: by reducing our participation in the broken system of outrage profiteering and manipulation, we are actually helping reduce the overall levels of toxicity that exist in the world today – the stuff that our friends, family, and neighbors all feel."

His solutions, summed up:

1. Limit your time on social media.

A. Delete apps

B. Aggressively unfollow and block specific accounts that share the kind of content that make you regret time spent on social media. (This one assumes that the social media companies comply with your requests. I have my doubts they’re doing that anymore. It’s like playing whack-a-mole. Get rid of one and two more pop up in its place. I have to hunt to find stuff from my friends in my feed anymore; what’s there is clutter in the form of ads, sponsored posts, stuff I have to aggressively block, and more ads.)

a. I’m going to throw in a condition: unfollow and block groups first, people you know only in online spaces second, and people you know online and in meat space dead last, if at all. Severing a relationship with a group won’t affect the group at all. Severing a relationship with an online-only acquaintance likely won’t amount to much ire, if they notice at all. Blocking people you know in meat space affects meat space, and that’s bad news in my book.

C. This is one I’m adding on my own as is something I’ve noticed in real life. Consider which device you use gives you the best social media experience, and use that device as your exclusive social media access point. I have three devices I use to regularly access social media: A desktop computer, a Kindle Fire, and a smartphone (if the brand makes a difference, it’s a Samsung). The Kindle Fire offers me, for some reason, the worst social media experience, burying my friends’ content and offering up a lot of fluff that I either scroll by or aggressively delete. The desktop computer is better than the Kindle, but by far I have a more positive experience on my smartphone. I don’t know what the difference is, as I don’t have setting set any different device to device.

2. Go on a news diet

A. Recognize we have an “optimal dosage” for news that should not be exceeded.

B. Rely more on straight news from straight news sources, rather than opinion pieces. (I’ll add: Ensure those news sources are in the business of producing straight news, rather than relying on meme sites, random folks on social media passing on “news” or pretending to be news outlets themselves.)

3. Disagree better, not less.

A. Take disagreements into offline conversations.

B. Don’t insult beliefs.

C. Don’t assume other peoples’ motives.

D. Get curious about their beliefs. Find out if they’re operating from care, fairness, loyalty, sanctity, authority, or liberty.

E. Find common values and compare apples to apples. If, for example, they’re operating from a point of view of care, demonstrate how you also are operating from that same point of view.

4. Lead with love.

5. Recognize you’re running your own algorithm in your head, and it may be as flawed as the ones being run on social media.

The thing I appreicate the most about this is that, if followed, these principles can at least slow down our automatic responses on social media and maybe convince our brains to either be more thoughtful in our comments or not comment at all.

But the flaws remain in that the crazies and the loud shouters will still be able to dominate social media unless the social media companies are required to claw back some of the civic real estate that's been ceded. I don't see that happening in a million years.

Anyone interested in reading a much better take on solutions, go here.