What’s up, guys?
Jared here.
Unless you’re brand new to the internet you’ve probably encountered some good old
fashioned online rage.
Like grief at a funeral, happiness at a pizza party, or humiliation at a bar mitzvah, rage
is an emotion that seems to innately belong on the Internet.
Now, I’m definitely not an angry dude but I’ve succumbed to my small share of Internet
rage.
In the dark days following the Game of Thrones finale, I may have ranted over Gchat to anyone
who would listen.
I may have even come this close to signing a toothless Internet petition demanding it
be remade with better writers.
In short, I raged a little.
And what did I get out of it?
Not much.
It didn’t make me feel better or more empowered.
I wouldn’t say it was a net benefit for my life.
But who does benefit when we get pissed off on the Internet?
Let’s investigate.
Welcome to this Wisecrack Edition on Internet rage.
Of course, rage on the internet runs the gamut.
It’s generally political, but not always.
It’s sometimes justified, and oftentimes not.
Sometimes some celebrity has said something so blood-boiling you need to watch 5 suggested
videos about why this person is human trash.
Sometimes, someone gave Sonic baby teeth.
Now, we have a theory about how rage functions in the online ecosystem, and like most delightful
and/or vaguely upsetting things in the world, it’s tied up in money.
Specifically, we’re looking to philosopher Peter Sloterdijk’s book, Rage and Time:
A Psycho-Political Investigation, which constructs a history of rage, from Ancient Greece to
present day.
Sloterdijk starts by arguing that rage is, at its core, an experience that de-numbs a
person, a scalding hot coffee mug for the soul.
In this way, anger is a fundamentally energizing force, imbuing you with the vigor necessary
to seize control of your own life.
Like many of our emotions, though, we want our rage to be recognized or legitimized by
someone or something more powerful than ourselves.
Rage, in this sense, is an important aspect of psychopolitics because it is a demand to
be seen.
Sloterdijk argues, rage ”becomes the momentum of a movement into the future, which one can
understand as the raw material for historical change.”
Rage starts wars, overthrows governments, and ends unhappy marriages.
Rage has manifested differently at various points in human history.
For the ancient Greeks, their Gods sanctioned their rage by granting them luck in battle.
But near the end of ancient history, something shifted.
Collective rage started being seen as a valuable resource for social manipulation in which
collective fits of anger were planned into existence by powerful dudes with highly-specific
motives.
Here’s where it’s helpful to start thinking of rage through an economic lens.
Sloterdijk contends that rage should be understood as an economic resource, of which every person
has a finite amount that they can spend in any number of ways.
Of course, since basically the development of currency, savvy people have opted not to
keep their life savings under their mattress - instead, wisely investing it in banks.
Similarly, rage works like an investable monetary resource you can put in a “rage bank”.
The first rage bank, Sloterdijk argues, was developed by the Catholic church wherein regular
folks were asked to “invest” their anger through bombastic sermons that threatened
them with eternal damnation.
They accordingly invested all their rage into the bank of a vengeful God who would come
back on the Apocalypse and lash out at all the nonbelievers.
Basically, rather than getting personal revenge on people who didn’t share their religious
views, believers were assured by the church that, like a trusty wingman with a sick uppercut,
God would take care of it for them.
Just as a regular bank will hold your money for you until you need it, so too would the
Catholic church hold your rage until the Apocalypse.
In this way, rage changed the course of history by creating an effective way for a power structure,
the church, to control the masses.
Sloterdijk finds another palpable manifestation of economic rage that developed in the late
19th century with the rise of Communism.
The Communist party tapped into the preexisting anxiety, resentment, and indeed, rage of the
dispossessed poor, telling them that the source of all their woes lay in the corrupt, brunch-loving
bourgeoise.
The Communist party very deliberately developed systems, machinations and operations to produce
rage amongst the lower class, harness it, and funnel it into the revolution.
Through propaganda, manifestos, collective organizing, and lots and lots of red paraphernalia,
the Communist party amassed the rage of its followers, and “invested” it, telling
them to funnel all their rage into hating on AND overthrowing the wealthy, and, especially,
the monarchy.
In this way, Sloterdijk sees communist leaders like Lenin and Mao as the first “rage entrepreneurs,”
finding savvy ways to invest the rage of the masses into a cause they could all get behind,
and one which would majorly pay off for those in charge.
Here, we see the way rage literally changed the course of history by triggering revolution,
for better or worse.
In all of the cases above, rage has had somewhere to live within a culture.
But Sloterdijk argues, in contemporary society, there’s nowhere to put it.
In the past, communities served as repositories for anger.
But nowadays, instead of expressing our rage at the town market or local square dancing
barn party, we’re hyper-individualistic, sitting at home, with our airpods in, mumbling
a brilliant, too-late takedown of that guy who cut you in line at Chipotle.
The point is, solidarity between communities, religions, and class has faded.
Consequently, we as a society have failed to give our collective rage a proper home.
Now remember, the crucial part of satisfying cathartic rage is “recognition” by something
higher than ourselves.
As the world gets hyper connected and individualistic, meaningful recognition becomes an increasingly
scarce resource.
As a result, a lot more of us feel ignored or unimportant, and alongside that, sense
our rage yielding little recognition, creating a massive group of people who feel exploited
and ignored by those in power.
So what happens to rage when we A. have no collective place to store it and B. are left
to experience it on our own without any planned target for it, or any form of validation from
above?
I’ll give you a hint: What do angry moms, angry Star Wars fans, angry neo-Nazis, angry
vegans, angry Beyonce lovers, angry ferret owners, and angry Christmas stans all have
in common?
They all choose to rage on the Internet!
The vacuum created by lack of community is being filled by the internet, allotting rage
to causes ranging from #gamergate to petitions hating on the Game of Thrones writers.
Unsurprisingly, studies have shown that high-arousal emotions, whether positive (like awe at how
this nebula looks like it’s hosting a rave for unicorns)or negative (like anger at the
Ghostbusters remake for ruining your childhood) are far more likely to go viral than low-arousing
emotions like sadness, a point demonstrated by viral content mill Upworthy in this graphic.
Rage, in short, is clicky.
A brief scan of top headlines over the past few years indicates an almost rabid-level
of anger people are being fed when they check their newsfeed.
From Obama saluting the Marines while “scandalously” holding his latte to the new Peter Rabbit
making light of food allergies, there’s no shortage of things to be angry about.
The problem is: in the absence of a rage bank, there’s nowhere for us to store our anger.
Just as you can view the Catholic Church as a rage bank, and the Communist Party as a
rage entrepreneur, we think it’s helpful to contextualize each social media platform
as a sort of rage “stock exchange,” where rage is bought, sold, and prospected.
Here, let’s go back to Sloterdijk’s explanation of how any kind of rage economy is formed,
in that it is “planned by its agents according to entrepreneurial criteria and controlled
by its managers with long-term oversight.”
In the case of YouTube, the “agents” of this stock market are the platform owners,
aka Google bigwigs trying to maximize profit, with the help of algorithms that will maximize
view time.
This often means recommending videos that you will find enraging, because rage = engagement.
Individual YouTubers can be seen, like the leaders of the Communist Party, as rage entrepreneurs,
directing users’ rage, laser like towards specific topics that will keep them watching.
However, unlike the Communist Revolution, there is usually not an identifiable “project”
for people to use their rage to actualize; the only goal on behalf of the entrepreneurs
is self-interest - they’re trying to generate YouTube views, amass Patreon subscriptions,
and sometimes, sell apocalypse gift bags.
The rage being stirred up is inherently self perpetuating and fruitless - it’s in the
platform’s interest to keep you raging so you keep consuming more videos.
What’s more, all this YouTubing won’t help a user amass a coherent dream for a “new
system” because YouTube is always about to recommend a new, radical thinker with a
newer, radical-er plan to influence you.
As a result, you’re investing all this rage without any hope of return.
Now, are we telling you to never watch an angry YouTube video again?
Of course not!
But we do think it’s important that everybody recognize the inherent value of their own
rage, both as individuals trying to claim autonomy over their own lives, and to online
opportunists who want to turn them into loyal flat-earthers.
Remember: there is literally a financial incentive, both for YouTube and for individual creators,
to keep you angry, and we’re no exception, which is why I’m taking this moment to inform
you that CleverCrevice doesn’t think Nicolas Cage deserved an Oscar.
But seriously, what do you guys think?
Is raging on the Internet emotionally healthy, totally toxic, or just a harmless indulgence
we all deserve from time to time?
Is the YouTube algorithm making your rage impotent, and if so, how do you feel about
it?
Let us know in the comments.
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