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SNL, ISIS, and the Outrage Economy

March 2, 2015

On Saturday night, SNL debuted one of their fake commercial sketches. In it, a father and daughter share a tender goodbye. She's leaving high school. Why? Well, we assume, to go to college. That's what kids do! But no! Turns out she's joining ISIS! It's funny because it subverts our expectations. Now that I've spoiled the punchline, you can see it for yourself here:

I'll be honest, I chuckled. It struck me as more "clever" than "funny." But whatever. Made me smile a bit.

Apparently, though, many were outraged by the story! And Buzzfeed was on it!

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And Mashable was on it!

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And the WaPo was on it!

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You get the idea.

At least Buzzfeed and Mashable actually highlighted some tweets from random people who claimed to be offended by the sketch; the Post just utilized the passive voice in order to assure us that many people were actually upset. ("The clip was criticized..." by who? Where? In what form?)

Now, I'm not above using Twitter as a means of demonstrating that people are angry about something. But I do at least make an effort to only cite tweets from, for lack of a better term, "power users." Those with blue check marks or a large number of followers or people who are actually involved with the controversy at hand, people who have some skin in the game.

The posts above strike me as something altogether different: A random sampling of the "derpendent variable" compiled in order to create the illusion of outrage in order to gin up more outrage elsewhere. If you search Twitter now, there are tons of people talking about this "controversial" SNL skit, this "outrageous" affront to decency—as well as a number of people sharing the piece who are outraged about the outrage, who are angry that people can't take a joke. Of course there are. Because you know what drives clicks? Outrage! "Can you believe this thing that this organization did? #smdh"*

We saw this late last year with the "Black Stormtrooper Controversy." Remember? Remember those hordes of racists who were all "Wow, a black stormtrooper is the worst thing in the world, WHITE POWER, WHITE POWER"? Of course you don't, because they didn't exist. Indeed, we had an entire learning moment ("racism is bad!") and literally dozens and dozens of blog posts centered on an event that never happened. Why?

Because clicks. Never underestimate the power of the outrage economy.

*For a master course in the genre, peep this Vice "article" that is, literally, about a YouTube comments section.