The Outrage Cycle - Click, Rage, Repeat

I’m staring at a submitted article entitled “PS4 vs Xbox One: Sony’s in Trouble, Not Microsoft”, right next to it is another entitled “Microsoft's Xbox One Is Looking Like a Lost Cause”. I know it’s going to be nonsense. I know that this is an elaborate troll for hits. I can predict the content and I can predict the response in the comments. I’ve been here before. I’m one click away from a sense of dejavu that dates back to 2007 for me. This has all been said and done ad nauseam. Yet, I’m still staring at the headline. Despite knowing the nature of the content and the predictability of what is to follow, I still feel this compulsion to click. I start to wonder why.

Why am I so easily trolled on this website? I see troll-type articles all the time. Movies, comics, religion and politics are all chuck full of sensationalist troll content. They never bother me. I don’t care much about these things. Gaming is at the foundation of my entertainment focus. It’s how i spend the majority of my free time. I don’t write blogs about anything else. I don’t care enough. Internet entertainment and information is a very focused experience. I seek out what interests me and very little else. Nobody actually “surfs” the net. We scoop out what we need with a bucket and then walk away. I get my gaming news and I’m out. People follow the things they are most passionate about on the internet.

The trolling you encounter attacks what is most near and dear to you. I don’t care if someone is writing negative articles about Warner movies – they can go bankrupt for all I care. However, when I see something proclaiming doom for a gaming company, I get upset. I want the most accurate and responsible depiction of the industry. Even though I know that everyone on this website knows better, and that these type of articles actually have little impact, they bother me because it is an attack on something that forms a key part of my identity – something that I am heavily invested in (psychologically at least). In the last 30 years, only one serious console hardware manufacturer has given up and Sega was a horribly run company. It’s not just the logic of the argument, it’s the audacity that gets me. Why would you even want to publish such trash?

Sensationalist media exists for simple reasons. These are the same reasons that reality television has been successful for so long. It’s cheap and effective in a medium that has a heavily fragmented audience. I can’t spend 3 days writing something for 50 people to read. I can spend an hour to write a troll article though. With shrinking and marginal audiences, websites resort to what fits the cost-benefit analysis. Sensationalism exploits your innate desire to feel superior to others. What kind of idiot would write something like this? I MUST inform him of his idiocy! In the process, that “idiot” makes money. Making a living through purposeful, directed stupidity – makes me wonder why I bothered going to college. I could have saved myself a mountain of debt.

About a year ago, Colin Moriarty began writing an article about the history of Naughty Dog. It is 16 pages long and is still unfinished (waiting for part 5). It’s based on interviews and information gathered from the people at the studio. This is no easy task. It’s also not a cheap one. It represents a huge chunk of time and hence money that was spent by Colin and IGN to produce something of quality. It was posted on this site and achieved a total of 140 degrees with 10 comments. http://n4g.com/news/1416730... The “PS4 vs Xbox One: Sony’s in Trouble, Not Microsoft” submission currently has over 800 degrees and has attracted 190 comments.

While Colin spent weeks to write and research his article, this crap probably took a few hours at best. It took a fraction of the time and cost to get a substantially better response. Websites do not operate in a vacuum. They operate via feedback because this is what drives ad revenue. By clicking on it you reward the behavior. If this is what you reward, this is what you will get. Many complain about “the quality of gaming journalism”, but what they are really complaining about is articles that do not agree with their viewpoint or allegiances. If this site or any other gaming site was ever concerned about quality gaming content, I missed the actual evidence of that. There’s been lots of rhetoric, but the empirical evidence says otherwise. If ever you look at the top stories on this site and don’t see a piece of trollbait, grab a thermometer, and stick it in your backyard to confirm that hell just froze over. As an audience, we have contributed to this and bear a large part of the responsibility. Outrage begets more trolls and trolls beget more outrage – if you click on it, it will keep coming.

The internet seems to have organized itself into a series of dynamic angry mobs. Angry about something? – there’s a mob for that. Social media, comment sections and forums have increased the ease with which we can co-ordinate and share our outrage. You don’t have to leave the house, get a babysitter or weigh the risks of incarceration when the police show up. Nope, electronic mobs and their anonymity disinhibit us to the point where we spout the vilest things we can conjure up without any fear of consequence. We can now get as angry as we want about anything we want and easily find people who agree with us. A few weeks ago I was dumbfounded by the intensity of an argument on YouTube in the comments section for a Mary Tyler Moore Show episode. People typed things that I have never said even at my angriest. They were arguing over the hairstyle worn by an actress on a TV show that was made in the 1970s. I cannot make that up, I’m not that creative. If all the audience wants to do is get angry, then a smart media outlet will always supply them with cheap fuel for that anger.

“Are games art?” is one long standing troll that has been used to gather hits by websites. They would quote someone outside the industry as saying that games are not (an obvious response) and then step back to watch the hit counter fly. But Congress and the Smithsonian have already ruled on that so now they find something to replace it. Enter the social justice warriors. When the whole Zoe Quinn thing started out, I was intrigued. Entertainment journalism has always had poor standards for transparency and accountability and it was interesting and heartening to see an audience demand a more professional approach. In the middle of it, Anita Sarkesian decides to conveniently release a video about whatever nonsense that her handlers tell her about. The intention was to derail the argument and they succeeded. Outrage is predictable. She knew that she would get threats, obviously she has received them before. She has now used the outrage cycle to level up in terms of importance and stature. The more we scream at these people, the louder THEIR voice becomes. If you read their articles, follow them on twitter or reply to their content, they become more powerful in the eyes of the community. I’m done with Kotaku and Polygon. I walked away, and I’m happier for it. The fact is that women proclaiming to be mistreated is not an argument that you can win in today’s world – no matter how non sensical their argument is. The minute you attack them – you lose. The best recourse is to limit their status, which means walking away from these articles that are now highly profitable for Polygon and Kotaku. Your own clicks are the ammunition being used against you. It may be time for gamers to get organized politically as well. Fight secret agendas with your own agendas - not death threats.

There is no doubt a therapeutic quality to shared anger. People like being angry. We enjoy intense emotions. They like it even more when their outrage is shared by others as it gives validity and weight to their opinions and some measure of justification and importance. Effectively, it’s an exercise in identity formation - these are “my people” and we are on this camp. You can identify who is on your side, and form alliances, allegiances and even friendships. We want to effectively form tribes. Why ? Because its easier. According to some, "tribalism" exists because the human brain is not adapted to working with large populations. The human brain resorts to some combination of hierarchical schemes, stereotypes, and other simplified models in order to understand large groups of people. Once you identify with a group, it then turns into an “us vs them” situation. You set out to marginalize all other groups. Remaking the world in his own image has always been a hobby of mankind. If all you want to do is attack and outrage each other, then all you will get is flamebait with which to do so. The outrage cycle does not just work vertically between websites and readers; it operates horizontally between readers as well.

So now I’ve decided to not be trolled by any of these articles. The result is that I barely read anything posted on this site anymore. I rarely do anything more that scan headlines. There have been days when I don’t actually see anything that I want to read. I barely comment anymore because there are no good conversations to be had in comment sections. Try to have one and you will no doubt be hit with a “TL;DR”. What do I do with the extra time? Well for one thing, I’m writing this blog so that 5 people can read it. This blog section and its content is really the main reason I come to this site and the moderators have done a good job at encouraging quality content. I play more games now and to be honest, I don’t miss much from online “gaming culture”. Online multiplayer games and their communities have pretty much replaced my need to be part of an internet community on a website. I play more, I’m happier, and I’m honestly enjoying being a gamer more now that I have largely extricated myself from the online culture. I imagine this is what it feels like to be finally free of an addiction.

I’m not going to click on this garbage anymore. I’ve had enough. I’m all out of outrage. After willfully subjecting myself to all the stupidity that humanity has to offer, I just want to go back to a time before all this where it was just me, my controller and my games. I honestly cannot say that the internet media has done much to enrich my experience as a gamer overall. I still need it for news, but beyond that, I can’t say that I miss anything. I don’t need to spend my free time being accused of being a misogynist. I don’t need them for reviews – I now identify more with the opinions of other users. Trailers and previews - I no longer look at them because they ruin the experience via overexposure. Podcasts don’t really impress me - not gaming ones at least. Comments sections remind me of monkeys in cages throwing excrement – entertaining for a while – but it’s best not to linger for too long. There are a few things produced that I like to read and I’m pretty good at finding them now without being distracted by “outrage porn”. It’s not about walking away from it all – it’s about being more careful about where I walk. I’m finding that some roads are best left untraveled as they are filled with those ready to rob me of my sanity.