We used to solve this problem by teaching people to have thicker skin so that we control the outrage regardless of the forum in which it occurs.
However for the last 10 years or so grievance culture has taken root and not only excused outrage, its proponents have actively encouraged it.
It makes me think of that scene in Star Wars where palpating is like “good, good. Let the hate flow through you”, expect we now have millions of people encouraging this.
How I wish we could rewind things to a world where foregiveness was still a virtue and we were all taught that sticks and stones may break our bones but words will never hurt us. Without such virtues, a world with outrage is inevitable.
I think this is an important point indeed. A piece of this puzzle, in my opinion, is that people are not taught this at home anymore. Most familes have both parents working full time and they're exhausted after work. Their kids are raised in daycare and neglected. And so many are raised in divorced/broken/separated/single parent households that compound the problem much more.
Furthermore, most of the US isn't religious anymore. These values and maxims mentioned above are not taught to people anymore, at least not to the degree that they were in the past.
A piece of this should be better training in the home for kids on how to understand the internet. To avoid being hateful and to question things. But so many kids are left to their own devices without parental oversight on this subject. I've even heard the call recently that parents want high schools and colleges to start teaching courses on how to avoid harmful content and misinformation online.
In what feels like ancient history, this used to be the parent's job, before both spouses were working full time.
Our kids and the younger generation suffer from lacking parental instruction on this.
However for the last 10 years or so grievance culture has taken root and not only excused outrage, its proponents have actively encouraged it.
It makes me think of that scene in Star Wars where palpating is like “good, good. Let the hate flow through you”, expect we now have millions of people encouraging this.
How I wish we could rewind things to a world where foregiveness was still a virtue and we were all taught that sticks and stones may break our bones but words will never hurt us. Without such virtues, a world with outrage is inevitable.