
Outrage culture is out of control - ilamont
https://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-rommelmann-me-too-portland-20190222-story.html
======
save_ferris
It's out of control largely because it's arguably what social media is best at
facilitating.

Legitimate discussion and debate are drowned out by insane verbal "body-slams"
on Twitter, because Twitter doesn't really exist to promote legitimate
discussion. And with the endless amounts of content and data we consume daily,
we place far more importance in services like Twitter to help us navigate the
sea of noise instead of taking the time to dig deeper into issues.

It's far easier to just attack someone on Twitter if you disagree than it is
to thoroughly debate why you disagree with them.

Ultimately, one gets the sense that there isn't enough time to have a complete
and nuanced conversation about a controversial topic because there are so many
other things vying for our attention.

~~~
porpoisely
Is it social media or the news? Is it CNN, Foxnews, NYTimes, BuzzFeed, Huffpo,
MSNBC, etc or social media?

Did rolling stone intentionally lying about campus rape cause the problem or
social media? Is the media constantly peddling lies like "campus rape crisis",
"racist attacks", etc the problem or social media?

I don't remember social media having this level of problem until the news
industry forced it's way into social media.

The outrage isn't being driven by social media. It's being driven by the news
industry and the media in general. But I guess blaming russia hasn't worked so
now we can scapegoat social media.

From UVA to Covington to Mollett and everything else, is it the platform or
the journalists, celebrities, etc creating the message.

~~~
save_ferris
It's not an either-or problem: both contribute to the outrage crisis. The
difference is that media doesn't provide the platforms for individuals to
communicate with each other and the world. That responsibility falls on social
media.

> I don't remember social media having this level of problem until the news
> industry forced it's way into social media.

I'd argue that this is largely due to the fact that it took many years for
social media companies to onboard large portions of the modern world. You may
notice a correlation here, but where's the evidence of causality?

> The outrage isn't being driven by social media. It's being driven by the
> news industry and the media in general.

I disagree with this. Many social media platforms guide their users to certain
types of content automatically using their recommendation engines. As an
example, I consume a lot of political content on Youtube, and yet I get
recommendations to watch conspiracy theory videos constantly. CNN isn't
telling me to watch Q, YouTube is.

~~~
PaulHoule
I remember Twitter being an instant hit with people in the news biz. I
attended an early "Times Open" conference where they were quite shocked that
people were live tweeting it.

~~~
save_ferris
Not saying that this isn't the case. The person I responded to conflates the
rising popularity of social media with the entrance of news organizations into
the space, which I believe is an oversimplification.

------
josteink
It certainly is.

As shown with BLM, the MAGA-teens and now the Smolett-case, people will even
_manufacture_ things to be outraged about, just to justify their own virtue.

While I consider that scary enough by itself, what I fear even more are the
(guaranteed to come) counter-reactions. It’s not going to be pretty.

~~~
pjc50
Do you think all of BLM is manufactured?

Smolett it now seems was faking it, but what conclusions are you drawing from
that?

~~~
josteink
The initial reason for the first BLM rally was a lie. This was well known and
well documented early on, yet the BLM movement kept repeating it.

[https://m.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/jul/18/lies-black-
li...](https://m.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/jul/18/lies-black-lives-
matter/)

~~~
pjc50
Ah, the impartial source of (checks
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kelly_Sadler](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kelly_Sadler)
) Special Assistant to President Trump?

~~~
yellowapple
The article does seem to cite quite a few third-party sources (and some
first/second-party ones like WaPo). Are you suggesting those sources are
automatically invalid because of the person citing them?

~~~
50656E6973
Yep its just an ad hominem attack with no critique of the content/facts

------
castlecrasher2
I'm certainly guilty of this. My two cents on the topic are 1) that people are
generally bad at letting other people feel and think on their own, 2) as the
article suggests, tribalism is now manifesting in schools of thinking, and 3)
life is so easy, to the point that others' opinions and emotions can appear
hostile.

Point 1 I realized recently when I discovered my family is especially good at
emotional gaslighting, where I would complain about something and the family
member (any of them, practically) would argue against what I said, in favor of
whatever I was complaining about. It was a mix of the Mr Rogers' documentary
and a falling out with the family that made me realize empathy means letting
others feel, letting others talk, and truly understanding them. Once you're
both on the same page emotionally you can offer suggestions or advice, but if
you're not on the same page you're denying that person's personhood.

2 and 3 are an interesting combination that I think has led to society at
large condemning not-niceness and leaving us in the newer generation either to
not have strong opinions or to have VERY strong opinions, pretty much on any
topic. I'm sure this happened in generations before but now it's so easy to
see one lunatic on Twitter and subconsciously think "that whole group is just
like that." I think social media is a mistake, and it will be interesting to
see how it pans out in the future.

~~~
skohan
> life is so easy, to the point that others' opinions and emotions can appear
> hostile.

I have a different take on this. I think part of the reason people seem more
hostile and or threatening to one another is because we have more access to
each-other. 30 years ago, you probably didn't have too much of an idea what
other people really thought unless you knew them personally or they were some
kind of a public figure. Now you can go online and have immediate access to
in-group conversations you're not a part of - including the conversations of
groups who might consider you their enemy. I think we might need a few more
decades to develop the social tools to handle this without being at each
other's throats all the time.

I suspect another element, at least in the US, is the subtext that the
explosive growth in terms of the material well-being of the middle class which
was enjoyed in the post-war period through the 90's has slowed. I think in
times of scarcity, or perceived scarcity, people tend to emphasize devision
and find more reasons to bludgeon the groups they're not a part of.

------
mancerayder
Folks,

Tech is being accused of tearing our societies apart. We're told it's causing
yelling over rational discourse, a feedback loop on both sides of the spectrum
that amplify the feeling of being wronged on either end, and a shifting of the
magnetic poles such that a side traditionally associated with freedom of
speech is now associated with Puritanism, and vice versa on the other side.
We're asking whether clickbait profit motives are causing this, whether it's
the demise of the print media, and so forth.

This is a _technical_ conversation about morality as it tries to answer some
real world problems.

And we have the arrogance to flag the conversation? If we don't take it up,
lawmakers surely will. It's already happening in the EU.

Please don't flag important conversations. It's not all about Node.js and the
annoyance of whiteboard interviews, is it?

------
linuxlizard
There's a great Bloom County from way back that summed this up.
[https://www.gocomics.com/bloomcounty/1982/11/14/](https://www.gocomics.com/bloomcounty/1982/11/14/)

~~~
effingwewt
I don't remember to whom it was attributed, but this always reminds me of the
quote 'offense is taken, not given'. This is weird, things have flipped. I
moved from California to Texas recently and TX now feels more liberal than CA,
in that here different opinions feel more respected, as does personal choice,
etc. CA felt like it had become fascist, too easy to be jumped on for
wrongthink. ESPECIALLY in the educational system. I swear growing up it was
the opposite. I was kicked out of school until I cut my hair, my gay friends
were genuinely oppressed and harassed, I was fired for getting my ears
pierced, I received $250 tickets regularly for skateboarding and rollerblading
inside the city limits,TX was terrible growing up in the 80s-90s. Now it's
much more chill and you couldn't pay me enough to move back to California.
Weird rant I know, just saying this stuff is weird and has far and deep
reaching effects. /rant.

------
mduerksen
Journalists: _Please stop taking social media seriously._

It vastly misrepresents the importance of issues. People that actually have
opinions worth talking about don't have time to engage heavily in it, either
because they are experiencing real difficulties or are too busy actually being
productive.

Traditional channels (radio, the pulpit etc.) all have some sort of barrier
for those who wish to broadcast. Some kind of credibility, accomplishment or
urgency has to be present for the chance to be heard.

This is a feature.

Posting a tweet has no credibility whatsoever. Just treat it like 4chan.

------
kenneth
Seems this thread was killed by flags. @dang — curious what the reasoning is
here. It's not a pleasant subject to discuss but it's a very important topic
these days. I understand the concerns about generating flame wars, but I'd
love to see a way for civil discourse on this to be allowed to exist.

~~~
yellowapple
I don't know if civil discourse here is possible to achieve or sustain, given
how emotionally-charged these topics can be.

~~~
smush
I tend to agree with you in principle; this particular thread is (granted I'm
reading top-to-bottom, not all the way through it yet) is somewhat restrained
compared to the usual black-grey-black-grey-grey-grey-deleted-black-grey-grey-
black-deleted text walls some flamewars tend to lean towards.

------
seibelj
Brave of the author to standup for what she believes in, risking and
ultimately destroying the family business.

Many others have families and careers and just stay quiet, which is the
rational move. Would I ever do what she did for anything I believed if it were
so controversial? No way, I have bills to pay...

~~~
NedIsakoff
The rational move is to be active in the outrage culture and profit. She's a
journalist so if she starts going all outrage and getting more readers, it's
good for her.

~~~
AstralStorm
It would be rational if you knew the outcome, not before. It is a one way move
unless you write under a pseudonym.

------
0_gravitas
It seems to me that outrage culture is more or less a byproduct of the whole
"post-truth" era, actual fact-based arguments are ignored for little more than
political reasons. At this point, the only way to win an argument is to shout
louder than everyone else, and I feel like I see it everywhere. It's one of
the (many) reasons I don't watch/pay attention to the news anymore, it's just
so draining to see.

~~~
Zelphyr
I think the news is perpetuating it. They're not stupid. They know they can
tap into all this outrage for their own benefit. Once people are riled up they
are sadistically attracted to things that will fuel that rage and the news
media outlets are all too happy to oblige.

That's not to suggest in any way we as a society, or that our government
should try to stifle the media. But the media outlets, from the journalists
all the way to the owners need to take heed their power and use it responsibly
and constructively. And that's something they've been ignoring for far too
long.

~~~
CompanionCuuube
Fully agree. The same is happening at the social media level. They get much
more engagement with this kind of rage.

But any organization that chooses to act ethically is handicapping themselves
because of how profitable outrage is for engagement and page views. We can
allow them to self-regulate but if they refuse to do so, we should take
measures to put organizations acting ethically on the same footing as the
unethical actors.

------
ergothus
When I was in middle school, I wrote an essay about how outrageous it was that
someone would get upset at me for holding a door for them.

That was over twenty years ago, before online communications were commonplace.
Somewhere between then and now I realized this had never happened to me. In
fact, MOST of the outrage people complain about is always third-hand.
Certainly you can see it online, but even most of that is outrage over
outrage.

If we look at the actual encounters we have in meatspace...there are plenty of
wrong idiots, but somehow they are always smaller in number and importance.

~~~
dsfyu404ed
I don't think it's all 3rd hand.

There's definitely a lot of 2nd hand outrage. Look at Reddit. There's tons of
popular subs that exist for no reason other than to shit on other people for
doing certain things. Every now and then we get a HN thread where it's
basically just everyone bitching about whatever thing the article is about.
I'd call that 2nd hand outrage.

------
pjc50
Vital author background: [https://www.oregonlive.com/news/2019/01/part-owner-
of-portla...](https://www.oregonlive.com/news/2019/01/part-owner-of-portland-
coffee-company-questions-accounts-of-sexual-assault-survivors-on-youtube.html)

She's talking about "outrage culture", but she herself was clearly trying to
monetise anti-outrage-outrage by running a video show accusing other people of
lying. She could have chosen to, you know, _not_ do that.

~~~
CompanionCuuube
Shame on her like those people "intolerant of intolerance".

------
leftyted
> Meanwhile some of us are watching from the sidelines, trying to stay out of
> the way, hoping not to be next. (Good luck with that.)

The author of this article _didn 't_ stay on the sidelines, which is why she
got dragged into this mess. Most people stay on the sidelines. The author of
this article hosted a podcast called "Me Neither" and, predictably, her life
was consumed by a shistorm. One almost feels like this is what she wanted.

I'm not saying anything about that is good -- I'd rather live in a world where
people could disagree about whichever issue without anyone's business being
ruined. But we don't appear to be living in that world and, for almost
everyone, it's totally possible to stay on the sidelines of "the culture war"
and just go about your life.

~~~
malvosenior
It's her husband's business that got destroyed though. He _was_ on the
sidelines.

~~~
dwild
Seems like she was actually in that business too.

[https://www.oregonlive.com/news/2019/01/part-owner-of-
portla...](https://www.oregonlive.com/news/2019/01/part-owner-of-portland-
coffee-company-questions-accounts-of-sexual-assault-survivors-on-youtube.html)

~~~
malvosenior
As a part owner (which you would think would be the default definition of the
spouse of the owner). It doesn't change what I said though. He didn't say
anything and his business was ruined.

------
Zelphyr
"Offense is taken, not given. No need to disarm the world. Just make yourself
bullet proof. Sticks & stones people. Block. Unfollow. Laugh." \-- Ricky
Gervais

~~~
AstralStorm
And this is how you lose touch and get trapped in an echo chamber, another
thing current social media are great at.

(I presume you keep the access available for people agreeing with you.)

Unfortunately, most vocal are people with too much free time and not much else
to do, or wannabe political activists. And of course tools, trolls and
provocateurs.

~~~
50656E6973
Its not an echo chamber if you just block people who rely simply on ad hominem
attacks, its filtering, as long as you aren't just blocking people who
disagree with you.

The algorithms are the much greater contributors to echo chambers than
individual peer blocking.

------
PaulHoule
First people are outraged about X.

Then people are outraged that people are outraged about X.

Sooner or later people won't remember what they are outraged about but they
will still be outraged.

That's the power of "fake news"; it doesn't matter what X is at all.

~~~
Udik
> Then people are outraged that people are outraged about X.

Sorry to disagree, but this is not really happening and I think it's one of
the reasons for the current madness. People who are outraged first claim some
type of victim status, and this is enough to force other people to support
them. And anybody who might disagree is silenced by moral blackmail- how dare
you voice an opinion against somebody who is a victim?

There are at least a couple of things that seem lost to public ethics:

1) the victim of some injustice is not on the right side of any possible
dispute, nor is he/she free from the normal obligations of civility towards
anybody, including the perpertrators.

2) the magnitude of some perceived injustice should be measured by some
objective standards, not by how much someone is "crying, shaking".

------
mnsc
This is the current pitch of _mainstream_ culture, where voicing an opinion
_is the only thing that matters_.

Why else would someone with "a 15-year-old business with a spotless track
record" publish obviously controversial opinions for the world to see. She
wants to matter. And now her opinions is on the first page of HN and I'm
reading it. Congratulations Nancy, you are now a player in a game with no
winners.

~~~
vasilipupkin
To be fair, the business was her husband's, not hers. he didn't publish any
controversial opinions - she did.

having said that, baristas quit? hire new ones, sorry, I am not feeling the
outrage regarding this outrage.

~~~
tlear
It’s going after the wholesale customers that did the trick. Lots of those
must be catering to the SJW demographic. Easy target.

He should turn it around and go all MAGA. Some rebranding and you have a true
red blooded American coffee ;) with wife as journalist they can probably spin
it into a decent speaking gig too.

In current America you are either MAGA/fascist/sexist/whateverist or you are
SJW/commie no other choices.

~~~
vasilipupkin
or you don't spout your useless political opinions that nobody cares about and
you are just a regular citizen

------
skohan
Two thoughts:

1\. I wonder to how much an extent this "outrage culture" is a natural result
of click-based revenue models. The game at the moment is to get the most
number of people to click on a headline as possible, and it turns out that
pushing people's emotional buttons (especially fear and anger) is really
effective at getting attention. Sure media has always been able to sell
outrage, but with modern analytics and AB testing, it's possible to hone in on
the perfect rage-inducing message much more quickly.

2\. Twitter is such a strange thing. Most people I hear talk about it suspect
it does not make them happier, and we've got this weird social contract right
now where whatever you say, or have ever said on there, regardless of context,
could potentially result in real-world repercussions including loss of one's
livelihood. If there were any other technology which could get you fired from
your job for 15 seconds of indiscretion during a night of drinking, or while
sitting on the toilet I would guess people would stay the hell away from it.

~~~
repolfx
Twitter is indeed a very strange thing. I have mixed views on it.

The character limits clearly contribute to the fact that it's so overrun with
drama. It literally prevents anyone from writing a long form, nuanced thought,
let alone an essay. Yet this is also why it's so popular - it lowers the bar
to a point where everyone can take part on a level playing field, without
feeling outcompeted by skilled writers who have time on their hands (consider
how few people blog vs tweet). And you know, the original dream of the
internet was that everyone could publish, everyone would be a creator. With
things like Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, Facebook, we're there. The internet
achieved that dream. It just turns out that sometimes what people create isn't
very appealing. Well, that's humanity. It's hard to criticise the internet or
social media for that.

I think Twitter has had another effect, which is that it's revealed to the
whole world, practically for the first time, the extent to which the social
elites are no better thinkers than anyone else and often seem to be worse
thinkers.

Historically, certain social classes have been able to work together to
present a very polished, very glossy exterior. This was especially noticeable
with politicians and corporations before the Twitter age where people often
complained that they were fake, spoke in soundbites, were just faceless party
apparatchiks and so on. Journalists would claim a moral high ground in which
they claimed to be totally politically neutral and trustworthy, bureaucrats
and academics would claim to be scientifically disinterested in anything
except their narrow domain and of course _completely_ above any suggestion of
bias or impropriety, corporations would only speak in terms of carefully
worded press releases, politicians would change their positions totally and
claim they hadn't changed views at all, and so on.

But now every politician, journalist and half of the corporate world blurt out
whatever random thought pops into their head to the entire world without a
seconds hesitation and it's recorded forever. And guess what, journalists
turned out to have extreme political biases, many academics turned out to have
crazy opinions on everyday topics, government bureaucrats likewise, a
politician who contradicts themselves will be immediately skewered by some
ancient YouTube video of them saying the opposite, and so on. The whole facade
of intellectual neutrality fell apart completely once Twitter gave us direct
insight into the minds of these people.

To take an example from a couple of days ago:

[https://order-order.com/2019/02/20/adam-boulton-accuses-
tory...](https://order-order.com/2019/02/20/adam-boulton-accuses-tory-
brexiteers-far-right/)

Boulton is a Sky News journalist who is required _by UK law_ to be politically
neutral in his reporting, yet here he tweeted that he believed members of the
government that support Brexit (i.e. all of them, given their manifesto
commitments) are "far right". So now people see this sort of tweet, and next
time Sky News tells them about the "far right" they'll remember this tweet and
recall that these people believe the UK is in fact run by an officially far
right government. And then they'll ignore it.

Is this for the better or for the worse? I think it's for the best. Yes, it
leads to a lot of outrage and drama for a whole lotta years as people adjust
to the idea that every segment of society that claimed to be trustworthy
isn't, and a whole lot of new groups and ideologies jostle for power and
prestige in the vacuum that remains. But in the end social media didn't create
this problem, it just revealed what had always been true.

~~~
xorand
>the original dream of the internet was that everyone could publish, everyone
would be a creator. With things like Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, Facebook,
we're there. The internet achieved that dream.

That's what users thought, because they have not read the Terms.

------
bArray
The LA Times talking about outrage culture being out of control.. Just
yesterday:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19219089](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19219089)

------
giffarage
Anybody know why this was removed from the Hacker News feed? When I saw this
post, it was at the very top of the feed. A few minutes later I refreshed the
feed, and it was gone.

~~~
yetihehe
Too much outrage probably, this post attracts lots of flamebait. Also, my
response will soon be downvoted too, just because people don't agree with me.

------
iicc
A somewhat related video: "This Video Will Make You Angry"
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rE3j_RHkqJc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rE3j_RHkqJc)

Script: [https://www.cgpgrey.com/blog/this-video-will-make-you-
angry](https://www.cgpgrey.com/blog/this-video-will-make-you-angry)

Linked Paper (from video description): "What Makes Online Content Viral?"
[https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1528077](https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1528077)

~~~
tilolebo
How dare you!

------
plasticchris
This sums up the causes pretty nicely: [http://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/life-
online](http://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/life-online)

------
Y_Y
Trying to control culture is difficult.

~~~
agumonkey
more manual work and isolation

~~~
ainiriand
Is that you Dwight?

------
Vaslo
So weird, I just read this on Quillette. More detail on this story in there by
the way. The LA Times article is definitely more to the point.

[https://quillette.com/2019/02/18/the-internet-locusts-
descen...](https://quillette.com/2019/02/18/the-internet-locusts-descend-on-
ristretto-roasters/)

------
folkrav
"Outrage culture" is a child spawn of political correctness.

Quite like Steve Hugues's bit on the subject.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ceS_jkKjIgo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ceS_jkKjIgo)

------
Chazprime
Can't say I disagree - we're in a climate where the "And Twitter Users..."
stories are commonplace that I completely understand why people are starting
to delete their social media profiles.

------
strikelaserclaw
First rule of business, don't get involved in politics which are regarded as
"sensitive" subject matter and have no impact on your bottom line.

------
vimy
"For many of us, such one-off encounters have become a regular—sometimes even
daily—form of “debate,” especially on social media, whose dynamics encourage
rhetorical stakes-raising. The idea that two people acting in good faith can
look at the same set of facts and reach different conclusions has gone from
unspoken assumption to exotic claim. People aren’t just wrong on this or that
issue: They’re morally flawed. They don’t have bad politics: They’re bad
people. On Twitter, you actually find college professors and politicians using
Nazi analogies to attack people who disagree with them on mundane points of
policy." [https://quillette.com/2019/02/21/what-my-days-as-a-
marxist-t...](https://quillette.com/2019/02/21/what-my-days-as-a-marxist-
taught-me-about-modern-political-cults/)

The "social justice" movement has turned into a church where everyone who
disagrees is a heretic that has to be burned at the stake.

~~~
mnsc
It sounds like _The "social justice" movement_ is made up of some pretty bad
people burning innocents as "heretics". We really should do something about
that, do you have any suggestions?

~~~
justaman
I'll get down voted for this one but here goes....

One thing I've noticed of the social justice crowd is the ever shifting goal
posts. Anyone to the right of you is an enabler of malicious ideas. Hardly
ever are people criticized or ostracized for being to the left of you. There
is a way to respectfully disagree but only when both parties actually respect
each other. Labeling someone a nazi for voting for a right wing candidate
results in the dehumanization of that person, thus removing any respect.

(Here is the part where im going to get down voted). I live somewhere
EXTREMELY liberal and if I go any direction for 10min it gets EXTREMELY
conservative. I see both sides daily. One thing I realized is the lack of
masculine social norms on the left and feminine cultural influence on the
right. The right seems to have a minimal respect for how things 'feel'. They
won't care if you are offended and rarely try to buffer any tumultuous
conversations. The left has minimal respect for authority leaving the louder
individual as the person more likely to be heard And listened too. Lefties
also embrace the idea that words can be violent and that if someone is allowed
to say something entirely opposed to their beliefs then responding with
physical violence is okay because that person was violent first. Its rarely an
issue on when both parties are on the left because the capitulation to the
louder individual in addition to the seemingly similar trajectory of thought
patterns.

To create a more harmonious society the left needs to dig its feet in the
ground and hold their position stronger against the more fringe radical
members that would like elimination of ulterior ideas altogether in favor of a
homogeneous and bland society. The right needs to listen to feminine influence
more frequently to understand that sometimes the fear of violence can create a
situation where violence otherwise would not occur.

~~~
dwild
> Lefties also embrace the idea that words can be violent and that if someone
> is allowed to say something entirely opposed to their beliefs then
> responding with physical violence is okay because that person was violent
> first.

That's the part where you are going to be downvoted and you know it.
Everything else may be relatively right, but that's part is just plain wrong.
There's no evidence that "lefties" are more violent, except your feeling,
based on a bunch of articles the right has pushed toward you.

~~~
reitanqild
At the moment, and as a European, it seems to me that lately:

(I'm using quotes here because I don't think this is what the majority og the
left, right or muslims want.)

-"the left" very much more often fight in the streets, throw stones, destroy property, burn cars. This happens on a daily basid now.

-"the right" has been responsible for a smaller number of much more deadly attacks.

-together with "the muslims" who'll also bomb a subway or concert from time to time.

A few decades back it was "the left" (RAF and others) that stood for the
spectacular bombings and hostage takings while "the right" were shaving their
heads, beating people and destroying property.

None of them are right and I wish them all behind bars.

------
NedIsakoff
This always happens with whatever movement that is hip the current day in your
location. Regardless of what movement, #MeToo or Red Guards or etc, this will
happen. Your only hope is to follow it and make a profit at it, which is what
I'm doing.

~~~
koverda
How are you profiting and from what movement?

~~~
NedIsakoff
I own a business that is selling a lot of #MeToo merchandising. High demand
and profitable.

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akhilcacharya
I think outrage over “outrage culture” is out of control. It’s quite
remarkable to see how much ink the elite media give to things like this and
the whining over college speakers being disinvited.

~~~
cglace
I think concerned is a better way to frame it than outraged.

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cdubzzz
This is almost entirely unrelated to the topic, but it's interesting to read
these musing on addiction from a person who benefits (for now, at least) from
a coffee business. As I read this I actually wondered at a few points if it
was satire.

> Because we need that next hit, we need it right now. Being in a constant
> state of emergency — a condition in which people notoriously make terrible
> decisions — is like having a fire raging inside the body, one that needs to
> be fed. It needs new fuel, and so we seek new enemies.

~~~
shin_lao
Come on, he's selling coffee, not opium.

~~~
cdubzzz
I 100% agree that it is somewhat unfair, but I don't think it is entirely so.

I had this on mind, for example, because a few weeks ago a co-worker had to
leave work early one day because she had a terrible migraine that wouldn't go
away. She was out of the office for the next few days and even went to a
doctor because it just would not subside. What she eventually discovered is
that she accidentally bought a decaf coffee. When she switched back to
regular, the migraine completely subsided and she has been fine since.

Her experience really struck me. It's not really a subject I have ever thought
about before, but I wonder how prevalent that level of addiction to caffeine
really is.

~~~
cglace
I quit coffee in one week. I went from 4 cups to 1 cup to half caff to decaf.
Its not that hard.

Headaches are a thing if you quit too fast but they usually only last a few
days. For me the worst part is losing the rituals of coffee. It's hard to give
up years of routine.

