I was cruising on my last run of the day when suddenly an out-of-control skier on my left missed a jump and wiped out in front of me. I swerved in time, but my outrage immediately went into overdrive. How irresponsible! They had no business being on this run! Crashing serves them right!

A little later, one of my ski buddies slowed to a stop beside me, shaking her head. “Did you see what happened to me? I tried to avoid a novice, hit two bumps, and lost it!”

My outrage vanished. Just like that. The reckless skier wasn’t some random idiot—it was my friend, doing her best. One second I was ready to judge. The next, I understood. My anger had been misdirected and pointless.

That ski outburst was a fleeting mistake, an instant of misplaced outrage that corrected itself when I got more information. But in today’s political and media landscape, we rarely get that second moment. Instead, we are kept in the first one—angry, reactive, and sure we’re right. Because that reaction is profitable and mutes our power.

You check the news—online, in print, or streaming—and instantly, you’re dropped into the latest crisis. Trump slashes funding. Inspectors General defy dismissal. Bird flu claims its first victim. Before you’ve even absorbed the details, you’re reacting. You lean in, seeking confirmation that others feel the same.

The system isn’t built for reflection—it’s built to keep you engaged, to keep you reacting, to ensure that your anger fuels the cycle.

If outrage didn’t feel good, we wouldn’t keep coming back for more. In some contexts, like watching sports, it’s even OK to enjoy it. Expressing anger—especially in a competitive or social context—delivers a neurochemical high. When anger is tied to an expectation, like winning an argument or exacting revenge, the brain rewards that behavior with a dopamine boost, making us feel engaged, energized, and righteous.

But when anger is regularly triggered, the consequences aren’t entertaining. The more we consume media that upsets us, the more we crave another conflict. Over time, we build tolerance, seeking out more extreme content just to get the same emotional payoff. The media’s variable and unpredictable rewards—outrage, validation, or a surge of likes—keep us hooked by using the same psychological tactic that keeps gamblers at the table.

And this is where outrage stops being just an emotion and becomes an addiction.

Outrage has always existed, but never like this—never this constant, this profitable, this deliberately engineered to be a business. Like any successful industry, it has established brands and a stable supply chain. It has producers, distributors, and dealers, all incentivized to ensure the outrage never stops.

The producers are typically the political class. Whether Left or Right, fear and outrage keep voters engaged and donations flowing, making every issue an existential crisis. Both Republicans and Democrats framed this last election as the “last chance to save democracy.” Every interview becomes a chance to hype urgency and non-negotiable demands.

The distributors—predominantly media ou