I'm general, familiarity leads to apathy. When we get used to "bad" feelings, it's easy to keep choosing situations that produce those instead of good feelings.

This is how we get people who "prefer" to be sick, tired, angry, hungry, dirty, afraid, etc. -- all things humans generally don't want.

We can train ourselves to "want" to be sick or angry if we're not careful to steer things the other way. It's much easier to control people who are sick and angry (and sell them things), so most messaging in society amplifies these negative emotions.

I don't think outrage porn is new. I grew up in the tail end of evangelical christianity being angry about how corrupt society was getting in the 80s.

I think shock news and outrage was a thing since TV...

Feeling 'righteously angry' has always been popular.

I sometimes comment on the actual facts of an issue on threads about an alarmist, clickbait headline. Not to minimize the issue, but to help people calibrate how freaked out they should be.

But people get really offended with the idea of calibrating their freak out. I think there’s just a group of people addicted to outrage. Nuance and critical thinking get in the way of that.

You don’t need to go to 11 on every issue you can calibrate. Trust me it’s good for your sanity.