That’s it -- I’m officially DONE with the feedback loop of outrage culture.

Someone famous says or does something, the media takes it, twists it, and runs with it, and the population as a whole loses their Godforsaken minds over it!

Between the bipolar narrative surrounding absolutely everything that Trump does, to football players taking a knee, to the cancellation of Roseanne because star said something people didn’t like -- I’m DONE WITH IT.

It’s not healthy to obsess over things that have little to no actual meaning in your life besides what power you give to it via the vesicle of your outrage.

Feedback loop

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See, the problem we’ve got here is that people learned that causing a fake outrage more often than not gets you what you want.

It’s not just politically or on a larger cultural level, but even in your personal life: if you complain, the odds are you’ll be able to get something extra out of whatever it is you’re doing.

I remember when I had just gotten out of highschool, there was a class at the community college that taught people how to complain at retail outlets to get extra stuff or stuff for free.

But things have evolved way beyond that.

People have learned that making a public stink about how offended and outraged you are about this or that not only scores PC brownie points, it gives the outraged monkey actual power.

Today, you have the power to DECIDE to become outraged about ANYTHING and it can get people fired. It doesn’t even matter if the outrage applies to you or your group -- it’s real, leverageable power.

The political Left learned this long ago, and only just recently the political Right has figured it out.

So we are now at the point where people are weaponizing outrage as a political tool. People are claiming to be offended by things they don’t care about at all simply to balance the power scale.

This feedback loop is creating a culture of severely disingenuous who sacrifice character and personal moral values with the opportunity to be offended for the sake of more and more power.

Trump and Korea

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I have been watching the situation with North Korea and Trump for a while.

When Trump tweeted out calling Kim Jong Un’s bluff and saying his nuclear button was bigger and actually worked, I thought we finally had someone in the White House who knows a thing or two about Asia.

In the West, we play nicey-nice.

We complement each other’s butts and go to each other’s dumb cultural ceremonies and say how much we like each other’s kids (... creeps), and then make secret deals behind closed doors about how to screw over the little people.

In the East, things are done a bit differently.

I had seen how Trump was dealing with China and knew that it would be interesting to see how he deals with Korea.

When he made the aforementioned tweet, I saw the Left go apeshit.

It was a knee-jerk reaction to something they’d never seen before.

“OMG HE’S GOING TO START WW3!! REEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!1!1!!”

It was insane and delusional.

I knew that it was just posureing. And anyone with any character would be able to see that as well. But people went ahead and flipped out anyway.

And then, the peace talks came up, and the Right, seeing an opportunity to gloat, started to goad on the Left: “See!? He’s actually DOING something! Not like that weak dumbass Obama!”

I thought, oh, that’s great! But I’m open to this thing not happening right now because that’s how Trump plays things -- and it’s also in his book that you should never enter a negotiation if you’re not willing to walk away from the table. It puts you an an immensely weaker position if you don’t.

Then, when Trump backed out of the meeting, the Left went “OMG SEE?! He’s a PUSSY! He’s being PLAYED by Kim and the Chinese and the blah blah blah! We were right all along!!!”

I thought, oh, look at that. He backed out like he said he might. I’ll bet that this is just the North Koreans testing how far they can push Trump. Now that they know, I’ll bet they ask to have the meeting reinstated real’ soon.

Then, the meeting was back on, and the Right yelled “HAAAAAAH! 4D chess, bitches!”

This feedback loop makes it very hard for people to look at the situation clearly and predict the outcome objectively.

Outrage culture is preventing people from analyzing what’s really happening in world politics.

The NFL

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This is one of those situations where the Right decided to take a page from the playbook of the Left.

Players decided they didn’t want to kneel for the National Anthem, for Black Lives Matter… or something. The whole thing is stupid to me and pointless -- I mean the protesting, the Anthem, the NFL, all of it. So I don’t really have any skin in this whole thing at all.

But the Right thought that this would be a great time to show the Left that THEY can be outraged, too, and they can wield outrage power, too.

And they did.

The kneeling players kept pushing and pushing, and the fans kept pushing back -- with their dollars.

They stopped buying merch. They stopped going to games. The stopped watching them on TV.

They let the NFL know that they were outraged by the disrespect to our Anthem by these players, and the NFL responded by fining the players if they kneeled.

The Left, who are outraged that someone would not want to bake a cake for someone with a sexual orientation they don’t agree with, suddenly were saying “The NFL is a private company, they can do whatever they like.”

But it was too late: the wallets of the NFL had taken too hard of a hit and now they are fining players who decide to kneel during the anthem because it is simply too fiscally disadvantageous to support it or to do nothing.

Personally, I don’t care if the players kneel. It’s their right as Americans to express themselves however they want. It’s also the right of the NFL to fine them for doing so when they’re paying them to be there.

Sometimes the price of your convictions is literal.

Roseanne

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I’ve been a fan of Roseanne since I was a kid.

My family were struggling working class people, and the plight of this struggling working class family was easy for us to connect with, even though I was a child I could still understand what they were going through from my own perspective.

So, when Roseanne got the show started again with all the case 25 years later, I thought it was pretty cool.

Disclosure: I haven’t seen any of the new episodes, but I am currently watching the old series’ with my wife on Amazon Prime.

So, Roseanne came out and said that some lady from the Obama administration looked like one of the humamapes from Planet of the Apes.

I’ve seen this sort of thing before, and I don’t think the insult is inherently racist. After all, the single most compared-to-an-ape person in history is Donald Trump, who is constantly and publically made fun of as an orangutan by many famous people in the public eye and nothing ever happens.

That, for some reason, is not considered racist, but what Roseanne said was.

Whatever. I don’t care, either way. I have no problem with people comparing other people to apes or monkeys or snails or any other kind of animals.

Honestly… are we going to act outraged that someone doesn’t like someone else and called them a name? What are we, children?

We’re certainly acting like it, because in response to Roseanne making the comment, she lost her show, despite the fact that it had just been signed to a new season and was already in production.

In my opinion, what Roseanne said wasn’t even racist. It’s not like she called black people apes or that whites are better than blacks or some such thing.

She made fun of the appearance of someone she doesn’t like.

That’s it. I don’t care. What, are people not allowed to dislike other people for whatever reason they please now?

Are we supposed to be compelled to like people just because others might misconstrue our dislike for another individual as a violation of social rules directed at groups?

This is ridiculous!

Take a break, get outside, and stop obsessing

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People need to take a few days and get some fresh air.

Put your phone down and don’t pick it up for what feels like a really long time.

Do that, then double it -- then double it again!

This outrage culture is destroying us in its neverending feedback loop that’s nothing but a downward spiral to a hellscape the likes of which none of us would wish upon our worst enemies.

Tell me what you think in the comments below!

Follow me @shayne