Attention is the real currency of politics —performative outrage keeps them in power.
You’ve seen it. You’ve scrolled past it. Maybe you’ve even shared it.
Just another hot take. Another outrage article. Another meme that reduces a complex life-or-death issue to a vicious punchline designed to provoke a reaction rather than encourage thought.
Your screen is a constant, churning river of political warfare, and you – yes, you – are the unpaid, emotionally invested foot soldier in a conflict where the generals will never know your name.
We have willingly handed over the keys to our minds and communities to the most performative and least trustworthy people in modern society: politicians and their digital propaganda machines.
We rage-share their narratives, venomously defend their flags and internalize their battles as our own. We are doing their work for them for free, calling it ‘awareness’.
Human history’s most significant marketing coup is convincing the robbed to idolize the thief.
Outrage is advertising.
Here’s the uncomfortable, explosive truth we’re all ignoring: this isn’t just annoying. It’s arson.
Each time we add toxicity to the digital landscape, we fuel the fire. We’re creating an environment where impressionable, isolated, and angry individuals can find a script for their rage.
The constant us-vs-them rhetoric doesn’t just rally the faithful — it radicalizes the disaffected.
Outrage is free advertising. Every share, every panic post, and every performative ‘stay safe’ selfie acts as a neon billboard for the very ideas people think they’re resisting.
Politicians, pundits, and predators all feed the same beast: attention. Give them oxygen and they grow. Starve them, and the machine sputters.
Impressionable minds are collateral damage.
There will always be a population of people who live by reflex. Whatever is loudest becomes their truth. Suggestible. Impressionable. Easily primed. They don’t need as much convincing as a script.
Social media provides them with one: the broadcast of rage, fear, and oversimplified enemies.
That script transforms real pain into moments that can be consumed. A headline becomes a hashtag. A tragedy becomes a meme.
A movement becomes merchandise. And somewhere out there, an unstable individual takes that script to heart and writes their final act in blood.
Performative safety is part of the problem.
We post ‘Thoughts and Prayers’ and, in the next breath, share the kind of divisive content that helps create the tragedies we claim to mourn.
Posting ‘Be safe out there’ after a news story may feel comforting, but it’s also a public performance that spreads panic and validates the crisis narrative.
Good intentions, when broadcast, become crowd-sourced propaganda: a message that tells others it is honorable to live by reaction. We think we’re helping. But we’re actually handing out matches.
The thief we worship
The insult buried inside the circus is that we elevate the thing that robs us. Politicians and their machines don’t win because they persuade; they win because we put them on a pedestal and hand them our megaphone.
The more we glorify them, the more credit they receive for directing our lives, even when leading us into chaos. We treat them like saviors or devils, but we’re still their loyal chorus.
There is a ruthless, simple remedy (that nobody likes).
The solution isn’t another hashtag. It isn’t a longer, angrier comment. It’s the one thing we seem to have forgotten how to do: shut up.
Log off. Disengage. Let the outrage wagon roll right on by without climbing aboard. Focus on your life — the real people, the real community, and the work that matters.
The most radical form of resistance left is to be bored—to refuse to participate in the spectacle. Don’t give the architects of division your attention. Starve the algorithm of your anger. Deprive the arsonists of oxygen.
Don’t confuse silence with consent.
This isn’t naïve apathy. It’s a strategic withdrawal. Politicians and click-hungry chaos merchants only gain power when you treat them as if they are a global emergency.
Remove that emergency, and their power will shrink to match the attention they’re given.
So, the next time your news feed tempts you with outrage, ask yourself: am I resisting the fire or adding fuel to the flames?
Here’s a manifesto you can plaster everywhere:
‘Don’t worship the thief. Starve The Spectacle. Live Your Life.”
