‘Reverse outrage’ now the driving force on Facebook

Facebook fights have become so prevalent – and increasingly nasty – that some people have abandoned the social media site just to restore some peace of mind.

But a growing online trend, fueled by countless websites, is designed to tap into our seemingly limitless sense of outrage, and this method of sparking agitation and anger is working exactly as planned. The sites get their “clicks” and those thousands or millions of visitors to those sites generate a surge in advertising dollars.

This new form of Internet communication is called “reverse outrage,” the desire to spout off on Facebook (or Twitter or Snapchat) whenever a controversy, no matter how small, arises online.

The ultimate example in 2015 may have been the short-lived outrage over Starbucks’ seasonal red coffee cups, a product design which was somehow twisted into a “War on Christmas” maneuver supposedly designed to downplay the Christian aspects of the holiday.

In the end, the story was proven to be a farce, driven by a small group of extreme evangelists, but it generated collective outrage to the point of “going viral,” as they say.

In a piece for Vox, Alex Abad-Santos explains that “reverse outrage” often begins with a group of persistent Internet trolls pushing a controversial hashtag or video or statement, and the backlash grows in multiples until it becomes a national phenomenon -- briefly.

In the political arena, the desire to express outrage is often manifested in response to an online item that is considered racist or sexist or homophobic. In other cases, Facebook commentators want to show how outraged they are at gun-grabbers or radical socialists or they just need to prove that they revere the constitution more than the rest of us.

In the world of pop culture, reverse outrage can be directed at something as simple as a coffee cup or a movie or even a shade of lipstick.

"Reverse outrage is the righteous Internet backlash against an initial statement or display of outrage — think a boycott or a call to action — however founded or unfounded it may be,” Abad-Santos writes. “It works like a tsunami, starting with an initial shock that's followed by quiet as the bluster and bombast retreats like a low tide, then returns in a megaton surge, often aided by the media.

“The irony is that in the rush to prove one's moral superiority by speaking out against some racist, sexist, or otherwise hurtful sentiment … the sentiment is frequently amplified on a scale that wouldn't have been possible had people not taken the bait.

“Social media has given us an avenue to prove our worthiness. And we've turned it into an express lane.”

Abad-Santos tells the story of a snarky Twitter message and photo sent by writer Parker Molloy that seemed rather innocuous:  “Went shopping for some makeup. How on earth is this a lipstick color?”

Molloy’s distaste for a certain shade of red was picked up by one website, then another, and her reaction to “Underage Red” was described as “disgusted” and eventually, yes, “outraged.”

Molloy’s bemusement with this phony controversy reached an eye-rolling moment when the company that makes the lipstick issued a public statement defending their product.

As Abad-Santos aptly describes this explosion of triviality, “the media centipede … gobbled up her story, digested it, and then vomited out another version — and then another and another.”

“… The most disheartening aspect of our rush to proclaim that we're Good by denouncing something as Bad (is that) we often don't care about fixing the wrong or adding to the conversation; all we see is an opportunity to affirm some version of ourselves by taking a side and making a scene. And in doing so, we've figured out a way to dismantle complex ideas into simplistic, easily digestible things that, in the end, are ultimately disposable — until the next fight comes around.”