Rage Loops: The Feedback Economy of Emotion

Rage is a depreciating asset. It's raw and unfiltered, and bleeding punctuation errors. Somehow, it's trading at all-time highs with no circuit breakers. This is what happens when existential crisis meets modern infrastructure: a 1,200-word scream into the void that is a treatise on sex work economics, geopolitical hypocrisy, and African aid programs ... all with spelling that appears to have given up halfway through and let autocorrect take over.

The thesis here is simple: everything is fake, everyone is complicit, and the conveyor belt keeps moving.

Churches outnumber McDonald's, but children still starve. OnlyFans accounts are out-earning teachers. Tech billionaires want you chipped like cattle while trafficking rings operate in plain sight. It's just every conspiracy theory and legitimate grievance thrown into a blender set to "maximum cynicism."

And here is the tension: anger is thought to be a diminishing asset, and yet it continues to power the cultural machine. Perhaps this is due to attention itself being commodified, with social validation, algorithmic amplification, and psychological compulsion serving as mechanisms that continue to circulate rage, even when fatigued. In other words, the system is powered by participation; as such, depreciation does not collapse it, the system merely re-contextualizes the energy of rage into anticipated and typical forms.

It's a muddled audience. And I don't mean muddled in some awful way, "oh, the right is ridiculous" or "oh, the left is terrible," but like, everyone's terrible. Influencers, megachurches, tech billionaires, anyone selling filtered reality; everyone gets the same treatment. The currencies are social capital & curated selfhood, moral capital & commodified faith, and data capital & control through “innovation.” Together, they're a shorthand for a culture where authenticity is packaged and sold. It's an egalitarian outrage. You can read it heroically, or you can read it as it's going to run out of commercial viability, depending on whether you're attempting to build momentum or simply yell at a crowd for a moment.

The celebrity tangent is the tell. Someone got excited about a photograph of a famous person. The friend's response: "Who the fuck cares... I have never fucking met this person." This was the central theme and part of the conflict, not left vs right. Not organic vs processed, but rather folks that still believe in a shared cultural moment, and the folks that have checked out. When someone's "Did you see?" was met with someone else's "Why the fuck would I care?" all of a sudden, there could be an evaluation of every injustice felt in history. If we are all buying bullshit lies anyway, why don't we litigate all of them at once?

This celebrity digression isn't just a flea-market tale; it presents a slightly broader thesis: the unraveling of attention and outrage describes how rage (of some variety) persists regardless of diminishing returns. It also illustrates a wider theme about audience ambiguity: the demarcation between spectator, participant, and commentator is not clear; cultural critique is both an internal and external experience. Sometimes we are the rage, sometimes we are onlookers of rage, and often we are both at the same time.

"Anodyne" for "anyone," "introwoven" for "interwoven." This is what happens when the ratio of rage to typing exceeds recommended levels (even more authentic than polished prose).

What I'm asking: Is there still integrity floating out there?

I watched the unraveling of a stranger on my feed the other day, thanks to the algorithm (ever the enabler). It was a peculiar slow-motion collapse. Somewhat intimate as their words itched like a humiliating '80s Christmas sweater. Aside from seeing this and being momentarily engrossed, I just couldn't stop scrolling. Then, the infamous chicken shit metaphor hit me. I must say, it's a rather poignant point: Kings of coops ruling over palaces of processed fabrication. We've let ourselves get throttled right back to the lowest common denominator of thought in our modern society. And, for some reason, it's as if we're perfectly okay with it all. The "new normal," I suppose. 

Integrity is still out there in some form, somewhere. Not a morally obvious form, though. Especially in a culture where people are pissed off, and rage has become a currency.

Unless it's hot and trending, the algorithms treat our honest opinions like spam. Maybe that's why anger arrives right on time, like a recurring subscription. But even this feels overly curated now. You'll notice if you scroll long enough, it doesn't really burn like it used to. Anger just peaks and trends like whatever virtual thing we pretend has value at any given time. It's desensitization. That's the psychology playing out here: see or get exposed to something long enough, and you eventually register the stimulus with way less emotion.

Outrage happens when anger goes public, and consequences appear. It's not completely pointless. On a good day, it can signal values, name injustice, and incite solidarity. Though you still have to ask if outrage has replaced genuine community lately. Think about it, the same post that enrages you also engages you. It's a closed transaction that's disguised as connection; you like, you repost, you sigh, and you keep on scrolling. For a moment, this all makes us feel like we're part of something bigger.

Our breakdowns have turned into online performances, and those performances have turned into coping mechanisms. We watch someone crack right open and can't help thinking, "Damn, I can relate," half-joking and half-hoping. That's until a fresh problem hits the feed and the crowd drifts.

We are all sucked into wanting, needing, and then anger. We just want to get seen, to have traction.

It's all rather tragic in a quiet way. You bark into the abyss, and the feed just keeps rolling on. There's no real change.

What is really going on? Are we feeding the wolf cattle? We are tuned into the ones we are listening to, and who are we listening to right now?

Before, outrage used to arrive in waves and bursts. Now, it streams non-stop since the internet got involved. Every conceivable emotion gets compressed into endless real-time streams. Does sincerity even stand a fair chance? I think it does; it's just dressed up and packaged for better clicks and optimal distribution, or whatever they call it.

Is it true sincerity, though? Surely it must mean something if we're all still reacting, watching, and trying to connect. It's most certainly not perfect. It's definitely diluted. But it probably still counts. We haven't gone all grey, yet.

While outrage and attention pull us in every direction, there’s another choice we rarely consider: stepping back. 

Silence or disengagement can also be an act of integrity, depending on intent. Choosing not to feed the cycle. Deciding how you show up instead of just defaulting to react.

All outrage is anger, but not all anger becomes outrage.