‘Coper takes the basic building blocks of human nature and combines them with a frank assessment of new tech to build an (ironically) enraging picture of how we have been manipulated en masse. It is devastating to read about how year after year our capacity for critical thinking plummets in proportion to our willingness to simply tune in and rage. Malicious characters have shaped this new world in symbiotic relationships with the corporations that profit from our attention. This book is required reading for every engaged citizen and thankfully, the final hundred pages are Coper's 'antidote' to these ills. It should be considered mandatory – for young and old alike – to get a crash course in media literacy like this. The landscape of how people get and give information has completely transformed over the last decade. Whether you run a community garden or a Fortune 500, whether you've got a ten-year-old son or a ninety-year-old grandfather, you need to read this book.’
Description
We were promised a global village; we got a gladiatorial arena.
No longer just a tool for connection, social media has spawned an entire outrage industry harvesting and monetising our worst impulses. Welcome to the era of Angertainment.
Angertainment shows how our emotions are being hijacked to build political and cultural capital by those who know how to game the outrage economy. How ‘rage bait’— the 2025 Word of the Year—can change how you vote, what you buy and who you hate.
In this high-stakes, highly entertaining journey through our new reality, Ed Coper unmasks the architects of this new power—from manosphere gurus to political demagogues—who have realised that in the attention economy, your anger is the only currency that matters.
Darkly funny and terrifyingly urgent, Angertainment is a groundbreaking manual for dismantling the outrage machine.
First, we must understand it. Then we can work to defeat it.
‘Ed Coper keenly explores and masterfully analyses the dangerous world of angertainment where so much of our politics now resides’ THE HON. MALCOLM TURNBULL AC, 29th PRIME MINISTER OF AUSTRALIA
Reviews
‘From tradwife gurus to manosphere rage-baiters, the world’s most dangerous actors are gaming your brain for profit. Angertainment is a gripping, darkly funny, and utterly essential unmasking of the viral mechanics the MAGA outrage machine has spent a decade perfecting. Ed Coper decodes their digital playbook: read this before the MAGA machine tries to cancel it.’
‘Read this: it’s urgent, vivid, informative and a powerful call to arms against the virus of “angertainment”’.
‘Clever. Frightening. Gripping. Only now that Ed Coper has given it a name – ANGERTAINMENT – and offered a compelling strategy to deal with the divisive malevolence of social media, can I fully understand my long-held fears and discomfort about this existential threat to civility.’