{"id":38665,"date":"2026-02-26T22:37:10","date_gmt":"2026-02-27T04:37:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/?p=38665"},"modified":"2026-02-27T01:05:36","modified_gmt":"2026-02-27T07:05:36","slug":"turn-off-the-outrage-machine-focus-on-things-you-can-control","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/?p=38665","title":{"rendered":"Turn off the Outrage Machine; focus on things you can control"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Every time you get outraged, someone makes money \u2014 and someone gains power.<\/p>\n

Your outrage has a market value to a lot of people. News media, social media companies, politicians. They wouldn\u2019t be crass enough \u2014 or honest enough \u2014 to put it that way, but it\u2019s the truth.<\/p>\n

Did you see what [Fill in the Blank] did today? Doesn\u2019t that infuriate you? Isn\u2019t it terrible? Aren\u2019t you angry about it?<\/p>\n

It doesn\u2019t matter what the subject is. It doesn\u2019t matter whether the report is fair or honest. It doesn\u2019t matter if it\u2019s completely made up. It doesn’t matter who\u2019s right or wrong. All that matters is that you stay outraged \u2014 so the companies which make our mass media and social media can keep making money \u2014 and their political allies can use your outrage to seize more power over all of us<\/p>\n

Why do you think you get these media services for free? It\u2019s because you are their product. Social media companies and news media companies deliver your attention to advertisers. See? You are their product.<\/em> As long as you\u2019re paying attention, it doesn\u2019t matter to them what you\u2019re saying or thinking. They\u2019re making money.<\/p>\n

Outraging people about collective problems \u2014 things they can do nothing about \u2014 is popular, because it\u2019s easy. I\u2019m less interested these days in sparking political outrage and I\u2019m more interested in talking about things individuals can choose to change by their personal decisions.<\/p>\n

I come from a background in the news media, but I worked in newspapers at a time when the Outrage Machine hadn’t taken over. In the day of 24-hour cable news and social media which seems to suck some people in every hour of the day, that has changed.<\/p>\n

CNN wants you outraged. Fox News wants you outraged. MS NOW wants you outraged. They all have a story to sell — and they relish an outrageous story the most because it attracts the most viewers. You might think the news outlet that agrees with you is preaching truth and it’s those other horrible people who are lying, but you’re missing the point. Yes, they have a point of view — because that’s popular with their target audience — but they don’t exist to make you happy.<\/p>\n

They exist to sell ads and to make money.<\/em><\/p>\n

There was a time \u2014 more than a decade ago \u2014 when I wrote stories here which outraged people. Why did I do that? Well, it’s what everybody was doing and it attracted the readership of people who agreed with me. It gave me a larger readership. It even had Rush Limbaugh and other national pundits talking about one of my stories back in 2012. It got me new followers.<\/p>\n

Isn’t that what this is all about?<\/p>\n

After several years of pursuing that path \u2014 from a broadly libertarian point of view \u2014 I realized that it wasn’t where I needed to be. I don’t believe it’s where you need to be either — as a content producer or as a media consumer. (I lost about 75 percent of my old regular readers after I quit writing about outrage all the time, but I know it was the right thing to do. I’m writing for an entirely different audience today.)<\/p>\n

I try to ask myself whether there’s anything I can do about something. If something is within my control, it might be worth me spending time and effort on. If something is outside of my control, it’s almost certainly not worth my time or energy, even if it’s outrageous.<\/p>\n

Can I do anything about the partisan political games in Washington? No, I can’t. As you were growing up, you were fed a lie. You were told that you had a responsibility to learn all you could about what’s going on in the world, because — you were told — you could change things.<\/p>\n

You can’t change things in politics. Even if you could magically get Candidate A elected instead of Candidate B, it’s a lie that anything of substance is going to change. Politics is a waste of your time and energy. It’s nothing but entertainment — and you’re kept tied to it by the media keeping you outraged, so you will keep watching ads.<\/p>\n

So what’s worth your time?<\/p>\n

Those are the things I try to write about here, from the vantage point of one person struggling to make himself a better and more emotionally healthy person. You can control how you treat other people. You can control who you choose to love. You can control whether you pursue better mental health or not. You can control whether you choose to follow the crowd’s values or pursue values that will last and bring you real joy and happiness.<\/p>\n

Learn to ask yourself my question. It’s simple:<\/p>\n

Can I do anything about this thing?<\/em><\/p>\n

You don’t have enough time in this life. It’s difficult to wake up and see the world around you honestly and it’s even harder to become emotionally healthy and mature. It’s easy to marinate in the emotions of outrage, but it’s useless — and it wastes the precious time you have left in this life.<\/p>\n

Place a higher value on your time and your attention. You don’t have to be “productive” by the world’s standards, but you do need to know which things matter and which things don’t.<\/p>\n

If you can change something — if it can contribute toward creating a better life for yourself and those you love — then it might be worth your time. But if you’re just outraged about something you can do nothing about, you are wasting your precious time.<\/p>\n

Turn off the Outrage Machine. Pay attention to the things which are going to matter.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Every time you get outraged, someone makes money \u2014 and someone gains power. Your outrage has a market value to a lot of people. News media, social media companies, politicians. They wouldn\u2019t be crass enough \u2014 or honest enough \u2014 to put it that way, but it\u2019s the truth. Did you see what [Fill in Keep Reading<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-38665","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-uncategorized","7":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1x9iR-a3D","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38665","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=38665"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38665\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":38670,"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38665\/revisions\/38670"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=38665"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=38665"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=38665"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}