We Need To Stop Peddling Online Outrage
Conservative media focuses too much on the viral moments and not enough on
Sorry, folks. This one’s all politics. I’ll send you a recipe tomorrow, though. It’ll be a good one.
I once got into an argument with a progressive acquaintance who said I was “privileged” for thinking we would all be doing better by getting off social media and focusing on our daily lives in the worlds we live in day to day. He was livid that I would dismiss the very real concerns of the activists who were out on social media fighting against the “literal fascists” of the Trump Administration.
I could only shake my head. It was an argument I’d heard from plenty of others, but it always concerns me when someone makes it. It’s not just progressives who are obsessed with the online political world, though.
There are several websites and conservative brands that have grown exponentially over the last few years. RedState, where I write, is one of those sites. Thanks to a staff that is on top of the trending stories and an editorial team that has done a good job of guiding those writers.
But many of these websites and brands have met their growth thanks to picking up on the trending/viral topic of the moment and churning out reaction pieces. Commentary has transitioned to an instantaneous reaction over what we’re seeing people talk about on social media, and I am just as guilty at times when it comes to determining what to write about.
When you take a look at conservative media today, you’ll find pretty much everyone is doing it to some degree. From Fox News to Ben Shapiro to all the places in between that are not as big or well-known. We’re all so focused on the moments that become hot on social media and we are failing to take into account the things that affect are more likely to actually affect Americans in their everyday lives.
The voters who determined the winner of the 2016 election were not people who paid attention to Twitter or shared political memes and rants on Facebook. They were Americans whose lives revolved around the jobs they worked and the people they interacted with daily in the real world. These were people who were worried about how the economy would affect them personally, not about how it might affect America’s standing.
Republicans, I don’t think, have done a very good job of explaining which of their policies best affect voters in a positive way and how they do so. There are some things Republicans can talk about, but oftentimes the message is muddled by a presidential candidate who can’t stay on message and a conservative media industry that prefers to sell outrage. Even when they can praise Trump, it seems like it’s always from a “Well, actually” response to something a progressive said at some point.
I get the need to be out there fighting day in and day out to protect your beliefs and your candidates, but at some point people are going to have to realize that they aren’t convincing anyone when they try. The political fighting on social media doesn’t amount to anything in the political world, but it does make that sweet advertising money that keeps many of these commentators afloat. The idea at one point seemed to be “Well, we have to do what we can to make the money in order to post deeper thoughts and ideas,” but everyone appears to have settled simply on the “Make more money” model.
I know a few people who feel as though they’re stuck in that spot, too. They would like to get out and do more of the fighting they started their punditry to do, but they are stuck in the commercial hell that is generating advertising revenue. That also makes it hard for any of us to be able to build a brand of our own because we’re stuck doing the generic responding-to-social-media-outrages thing. Where some folks would like to make a name for themselves, they are stuck appealing to what is frankly the lowest common denominator in order to even justify their jobs in the first place.
The Trump era doesn’t make that any easier, and we can’t go out and try to convince anyone outside our bubbles to change their minds when we’re stuck having to satisfy the frankly primal thirst for affirmation from the standard conservative media audience. Social media has ground a lot of the “fight” to a halt and forced conservative media to become far more reactive than proactive.