What’s “angertainment?”
This new word came from Ed Coper. In his book Angertainment, he outlines the theory that with the internet, we were promised a global village.
Instead, we got a gladiatorial arena where our strongest emotions of fear and anger are manipulated for the profit and entertainment of those who should know better.
These folk are really quite good at pitting many against each other for the profit of themselves.
They do so by putting out on the screen the wackiest, ludicrous and emotive ‘grab clicks’. Our news feeds are full of carefully worded headlines which seek to draw us into a slurry of outrage and fury.
Further, the tagline of the story will always couch the topic as if the event was a simple black-and-white story and seek to draw us down a particular line of reasoning.
Short, pithy anger-inducing headlines are what we have been sucked into buying, digesting and integrating.
Here’s some from a news feed on June 25th
“Queensland teenager acquitted of planning a terror attack against Liberal Party members.”
“Man charged with murdering former partner Crystal Beale and dumping her body denied bail for second time”
A story that began with
“The argument is more nuanced and complex than what we might first believe. There are valid points on both sides and further negotiation and understanding is the way forward to a more fruitful, long-term outcome for all”
would probably not excite us, draw us in and make us investigate further. In short, it would not generate the dollars.
People have realised that in the attention economy, your anger is the only currency that matters. Whatever happened to
‘Do justly, love mercy, walk humbly with your God’? These words from the prophet Micah are the antidote for the sepsis of angertainment that has seeped into our world.