Saying good bye to Outrage Guy
He ruined the 2010s for so many of us, didn’t he?
Just a few days into 2020, I’m ready to name my Person of the Decade — for the decade that just ended, not the one now beginning — but I’m hesitant to do so, since I don’t want to accidentally resuscitate him.
“He” is Outraged Guy, and I come not to praise him, but to bury him. I hope.
Outraged Guy was lying low through the holidays (distracted by actual happiness, perhaps?) and the rest of us welcomed the respite.
“The rest of us” are people who experience regular concern across a modest array of topics but reserve outrage for just a few select matters so we can devote most of our emotional energy to the real people who populate our real lives.
Outraged Guy has no such boundaries. He lives in virtual space, of course, because if you saw him ahead of you at the office coffee machine, you’d turn around and hurry off. He knows this and indulges his spleen where it’s safe — online.
He ruined the 2010s for so many of us, didn’t he? He dominated the comments section everywhere, lurked online waiting for fresh news-meat to feed his insatiable need to be angry and spewed his bile on every available platform. He doesn’t realize his anger usually renders him stupid.
“He” may also be a woman. Though “Outraged Gal” as a label doesn’t have the same heft, women certainly held their own in the past decade’s rage sweepstakes. (I use the past tense here because I’m just crazy optimistic.)
No topic was off limits. Tantrums came out of nowhere, invented on the spot, drawn from harmless words or actions that happened within range of a person eager to be offended and handy with social media.
My favorite example is the most recent — or maybe it’s the only one that still stands out in my memory from the decade’s giant, roiling cloud of digital rage.
This international episode started a couple of weeks before Halloween in 2019 when an Australian woman spotted a tiny bride costume in her local Kmart. She decided it promoted child marriage, child slavery, child abuse, child rape, child sex trafficking and pedophilia.
That’s a lot of weight to put on one yard of white polyester.
Or maybe it’s just a costume. Maybe it doesn’t encourage negative behavior any more than a Spiderman suit encourages kids to believe they can defy gravity and spin webs from their palms.
And some people actually view marriage as a good thing, esteeming family life more fulfilling than decades spent as a cog in the world economy’s Rube Goldberg machine.
After a couple of hundred people signed Outraged Gal’s online petition, the store removed the bride costume and apologized. Then a few thousand people signed a counter-petition, in favor of common sense and costume restoration.
Many hours of human energy were wasted on this silliness. That’s the least damage we could hope for. Constant rage has brought far more destructive results, from Silicon Valley to Capitol Hill, and most reasonably healthy citizens don’t like it.
Or so we say. It’s hard to tell. Between the trolls who sour virtually any online “conversation” and the bots that drive an astonishing 15 percent of all Twitter accounts, it’s hard to quantify what percentage of us still have our wits about us.
I asserted that Outrage Guy lives online, but older media bear some blame, too, basing stories on whatever’s “trending” in a desperate bid for relevance. (Dear Broadcast TV Anchorperson — 2,000 people experiencing conversational chaos on Twitter don’t determine what’s important in a nation of 329 million people.)
The joke at our house is that by the time I adopt anything — Silly Bandz, “cray-cray,” Gangnam style — it’s officially over. Dead. Done.
So, beware, Outrage Guy & Gal: In case you’re not truly vanquished but just hungover from the holidays, I’ve decided this might be the year I finally join Facebook and Twitter. It’s my bid to keep the new Roaring ’20s to a happier hum.