The Age of Manufactured Outrage: How Algorithms Turn...

By Joe Perez Ribas | WBN News, WBN News Nashville, WBN News Global | May 29, 2025

We like to believe we’re living in unprecedented times. Every generation does. But if history’s good for anything, it’s reminding us that the chaos of today is often just yesterday’s sins dressed in digital clothing.

Once upon a time, if you wanted to stir a little public fury, you’d scrawl your grievances on a pamphlet and hand them out in the town square. The 1700s were filled with anonymous broadsides and screeds meant to inflame neighbors and unsettle monarchs. Fast forward to the early 20th century, and yellow journalism splashed sensational headlines across every street corner, peddling drama over truth because scandal sold papers.

Today, we don’t need ink and presses. We’ve built machines that do it for us.

Modern social media algorithms are engineered for one thing: engagement. And nothing engages like outrage. A mild disagreement doesn’t trend. Thoughtful nuance won’t go viral. But spark a fight and watch your notifications light up like a dry barn in a lightning storm.

It’s a cycle as old as gossip itself, but now it’s automated and relentless. Platforms amplify controversy because it keeps us scrolling, arguing, and clicking. Every minor opinion is framed as a crisis, every celebrity misstep a referendum on society. The algorithm doesn’t care about context. It cares about keeping you locked in its maze.

This constant state of manufactured outrage isn’t without cost. Civil discourse is suffocating under the weight of hot takes. Public trust in institutions crumbles when every headline feels like another betrayal. And our mental health frays as we’re whipped from one scandal to the next, exhausted and cynical before breakfast.

But here’s the thing. We’ve been here before. And every time, people fought their way back to something better.

Maybe it’s time we did it again.

Time to pause before retweeting rage. To resist platforms that profit off our worst impulses. To remember that a conversation worth having rarely fits in a caption.

Maybe it’s time we stopped letting machines pick our battles and started choosing the hills worth dying on ourselves.

Joe Perez Ribas is a staff writer for WBN News, based in Tampa, Florida. He is also the founder of Global Computer Services. Joe covers media culture, social trends, and the digital forces reshaping public discourse. Readers can reach him at info@joeperezribas.com or connect via LinkedIn. When he isn’t chasing a story or wrestling with algorithms, you’ll find him immersed in old history books or building the perfect playlist for road trips through the American South.

Tags: #social media, #outrage culture, #media history, #algorithms, #public discourse

Source:

“The Pamphlet Wars of the 17th and 18th Centuries.” History Today.
“Yellow Journalism: The 'Fake News' of the 19th Century.” Smithsonian Magazine.