Enragement is engagement – but what if you don’t want to rage?

The news that Elon Musk is buying Twitter has been high on the agenda over the last couple of weeks. For a lot of people, it signifies a turning point – if the richest person on the planet can just buy the place a lot of people go to exercise free speech what does that mean for the future of free speech? And should we all be allowed to say what we want, whenever we want anyway?

The media and social media landscape is changing faster than ever and in a lot of cases that means less trust, less integrity, and more exhaustion at the state of what we consume. We see this all the time; clickbait, manufactured ‘hot takes’, call outs, false opinions to create drama, obsessions with controversial topics, cancel culture and us vs them dichotomy.

But as we are being conditioned to believe that this is the media, we are forgetting that we are real people. We are being taught to cause drama and to shout our opinions but at what expense? Can you live a truly calm and peaceful life if you have to hold your breath every time you check the internet?

Making money from online media is hard and often depends on clicks and eyeballs. And enragement is engagement these days. We are used to getting our content for free, but we are paying with our attention. Too often this means consuming rage and anger, rather than real ideas, nuance and connection.

If that’s not the media landscape you want, what can we do?
Firstly, pay for the media you love. Buy newspapers, magazines, donate to your favourite podcast’s patron account, tip your favourite creators, sign up for the paid subscription option. Creating content is hard and expensive. If you want to support independent media or creators, pay them.

We live in the attention economy and pay with our attention. Be conscious of what you consume. If you HATE something - don’t read it online.

And what if you’re a business / brand trying to navigate this space? Have opinions if they feel good to you, but you don’t have to scream and shout to cause controversies to get yourself out there. It can work if you are truly passionate about it, but we are all getting slightly fatigued of the endless hot takes. Stand up for what you believe in but do it in a way that works for your business and your nervous system.

You don’t have to jump on the bandwagon if it’s not going where you want to go. You could focus on creating content that really connects with your community on and offline. Rage if you want, but there are other ways.