Twitter's Contradictory Culture of Outrage

By: James Southworth

As a lot of my frequent readers know (and just know I'm very appreciative of the average of about 100 or so people that read everything I post even though I'm not nearly the best critic in the world), every once in a while on this review site I will write about a commentary piece. Often I try to keep these pieces within the realm of music or movies or media in general. This post is slightly breaking the rules since it's about social media, something that I rarely talk about. But I just can't go any longer without talking about what is probably the most toxic piece of social media out there: Twitter. Yes, Facebook can be bad, but I find it more comical the outrage that appears on Facebook. People are also quick to call out "animal abuse experts", people who make insane political statements, or people just being entirely clueless or moronic. Instagram has some annoying Instagram "comedians", but they're easily avoidable and ultimately harmless. Snapchat doesn't have any major toxicity problems with it either. I can even forgive Tumblr, although it definitely has its share of problems. But Twitter... oh man, I have been tempted to leave this social media site over and over and over again. Let's talk about why, specifically in the context of the outrage culture that constantly pervades this website and the "fake woke" mentality.

Before I provide some specific examples of what I'm talking about, let me give you a general idea of what my Twitter news feed often looks like. Sure, there are some funny posts that appear on my timeline, some outdated overdone memes, and every once in a while a quality post from one of my friends. But what appears more than anything is the stuff that people retweet. Once again, there are some really good things that people retweet. But more often than not, my feed is consumed of the most extremist liberal or conservative garbage. On Twitter, due to it having a 280 (or something like that) character limit, there's no room for nuance when you give your viewpoints. I've even seen this in context of my own university. This will not apply to everyone that's reading this, but if you don't know, at Asbury there are chapel tweets. Students tweet about their feelings about the 10:00 chapel service. First of all, I don't quite understand why people can't just put their phones away for the course of 50 minutes and actually listen to what is being said in chapel. It's not that long of a time. What gets me more annoyed, though, is the fact that almost solely the only thing that people do on Twitter is complain about chapel. They don't like what the person is saying; the speaker is too boring. Just whine, whine, whine. Now, I will admit that there are some chapels that have been really bad this semester. But is Twitter really the best place to take your complaints? Why not have a conversation about it that goes beyond petty insults and arguing? People like to complain about chapel because it's just something to pass the time. It accomplishes absolutely nothing, and only ends up in the never ending vicious cycle of outrage continuing to become more and more toxic.

In comparison to some of these other examples, the one pertaining to my university is fairly minor (and I still love Asbury and the many people that go there, plus I'm not the only one at Asbury who has problems with chapel tweets). Let's talk about one of the most recent examples: Kanye West. Out of all the examples here, this is the hardest one for me to be entirely objective about, because it requires me to support Kanye West's tweets. I personally can't stand Kanye's Twitter and public personality. His brand is making controversy, no matter what the cost. I don't know whether he actually believed that someone else deserved that Grammy that Taylor Swift won in that infamous moment where he took the mic from Swift at the Grammys, but it didn't matter. West got the attention, and that was the whole point. He tries to weirdly balance his controversial as a business model with being "inspirational", and it doesn't work. But that's besides the point. Lately, Kanye's been getting a lot of heat because he's been tweeting about how he supports Trump, posting pictures of him wearing his MAGA hat which was signed by Trump. I'll admit, these tweets made me a little surprised. But not as much as some people on Twitter. Many people were basically saying how anything West has to say is now irrelevant because of his support of the President. No one should listen to him or his music. He's basically not representative of the black community anymore because of his political affiliation. This sort of made me cynically laugh because of so many people who say that we need to shut up and listen to what persons of color have to say, because they are the oppressed minority. But it looks like now we should only listen to what they have to say when it aligns with our political viewpoints. This type of hypocrisy is on Twitter repeatedly, no matter whether you align conservative or liberal. It is so stupid, and the outright blatant contradiction is sickening. How about we try to listen to where people are coming from rather than make assumptions on them based on who they support politically?

An even more ridiculous example of outrage comes right from one of the most pretentious and "fake woke" artists out there, Halsey. Her music and her personality go hand and hand, as she tries to make out like she's making these big important statements, but ultimately they are meaningless, or even worse, she doesn't believe in them herself. Recently she posted on Twitter about her anger that people of color don't have their own hotel shampoos that they can use, and that hotel shampoo is just for white people. In the society of liberal extremists, this type of "racism" would be known as a microagresssion. So basically something that would only evoke a little bit of anger. So, why be angry about it at all? It's like a first world problem rather than actual racism. Thankfully a lot of people in Halsey's own fanbase were calling her out on the stupidity of being angry about hotel shampoo. Because wouldn't one think that hotel shampoo in general is just cheap? People of all races were commenting on how idiotic this was, and that there are clearly more pressing things to be worried about. Of course Halsey had to go on the offensive and was replying back to people for hours. She was even making separate tweets trying desperately to justify her anger as well as change the conversation. Most funny of all was her final tweet about the issue, where in her final sentence she said that she actually agreed that hotel shampoo in general is just cheap. So wait- are you actually agreeing that cheap hotel shampoo is just cheap hotel shampoo? Then what exactly was the point of the tweet? The answer is there was no point, rather than for Halsey to just contribute to Twitter's never-ending cycle of trying to be the most woke person on the website, the most outraged. I mean, why be on Twitter other than to be outraged about something incredibly minor? That seems to be the website's most primary purpose these days.

My final example probably makes me the most angry, as tweets like these are probably the most frequent I see. Sure, there's outrage that surrounds celebrity figures. But often, pointless outrage comes from people who are ultimately just fishing for likes and looking to become viral on Twitter just so they can post their Soundcloud link, or something like that. To give this tweet some context, there was this girl who posted about her prom, and the dress she was wearing was something you would see in Chinese culture. It was a very nice dress, and she was clearly meaning nothing disrespectful by it. But, of course, someone had to go out of their way to get on their high horse, as this person quote tweeted her, saying "My culture is not your g*****n prom dress". He then went on to explain about the background behind the dress, which was admittedly interesting. But the point still stands that this guy went out of his way to express anger about a girl who was wearing a dress for just one night to a fun prom event. The girl made several tweets pointing out how she wore the dress because she wanted to appreciate, not appropriate, Chinese culture. I was very happy to see this girl not bow down to Twitter's outrage mentality. This mentality is so hurtful, because it leads to so many people on Twitter trying to break down one person just because they did something that made them a little bit angry. The outrage culture is the very contradiction of what American society tries to promote, which is tolerance. If you don't like a viewpoint someone expresses on Twitter, the best thing you can do, I guess, is to call out the person in a vicious manner and wait for other people to follow suit. This way you can go into the toxic black hole of validation where only you and the people that agree with you are right. Because your opinion is a fact.

See how awful, and ultimately scary, this mentality is? This is what Twitter has turned into and by the day it only seems to get worse. People will search for the smallest thing to get offended at, and they will try to make it into something that seems like a big deal. And the worst part is, hundreds of thousands of people BUY it. They accept that this is the only way to view the world. There are no nuances, only extremes. People aren't complex human beings, but rather you can create strawmen out of them and tear them down without a shred of remorse because you only see one side of them. Last year, a porn star ended up killing herself because of the outrage culture on Twitter coming after her. The reason people were coming after her is just because she said that she preferred not to date men of a particular skin color. That's what caused such vicious bullying of her, and that is what continues to make Twitter a site that I would not encourage very young people to venture on to. It's sad that a social media site like Twitter ultimately tears down positive social constructs, and rather makes us build walls against each other. If you're part of the contradictory culture of outrage on Twitter, please stop... before it's too late.