Why Everything Feels Like a Moment for Outrage
- PastorMark
- Feb 11
- 5 min read
When Everything Feels Like a Crisis: Outrage, Catastrophizing, and the Way We Process Culture
There I was sitting at table for breakfast on Monday, coffee still warm in my hand, and my phone buzzing like an impatient toddler. A trending topic had erupted about a cultural moment. Within minutes, I saw declarations of deep moral failure, predictions of societal collapse, claims of cultural betrayal, and posts that read more like battle cries than reflections.
I hadn’t even taken a sip of my coffee.
And this experience isn’t unique to me. It’s becoming normal. We live in an age where almost every cultural observation…from a halftime show to a public statement, quickly becomes a moral event and in some cases a reason to panic. What used to be processed quietly, maybe in conversation with a friend or a moment of prayer, now gets pushed into a public square with the expectation of instantaneous reactions.
The real issue isn’t that we have opinions. It’s how fast we escalate from opinion to outrage.
Outrage Isn’t Just Emotion — It’s Reinforced Behavior
There’s some pretty solid research showing that social media doesn’t just display our emotional reactions …it shapes them. (No big shocker there). Researchers at Yale found that social media platforms don’t just reflect emotional reactions — they reinforce them. A study tracking 12.7 million tweets from over 7,000 users showed that users who received more “likes” and “shares” for morally outraged posts were more likely to express outrage in later posts, indicating a feedback loop where social rewards encourage more outrage over time. (1)
This same study, published in Science Advances, confirmed that social media’s design — prioritizing engagement — affects the tone of online conversations, making moral outrage more prevalent and potentially more extreme over time. (2)
More than that, people tend to perceive more outrage online than actually exists. Studies show observers often infer a higher level of moral outrage from social media posts than the posters themselves report, especially when they are spending a lot of time on these platforms. This can also distort how hostile or divided we think our culture really is.
In other words, a platform’s design can make emotional reactions, especially ones like: anger, disgust, and shock, feel like the default mode of engagement.
Why Outrage Spreads So Easily
Part of this has to do with human psychology itself. Negative emotions like anger and disgust are naturally attention‑grabbing. They trigger stronger engagement than mild reactions like amusement or mild interest. Research analyzing emotional content on social networks found that negative emotional framing, especially anger, tends to generate more sharing and interaction than other types of emotional responses.
This matters because of the way social platforms function: posts that generate strong emotional responses tend to be shown to more people. That means outrage, by its nature, is amplified. We aren’t just reacting in isolation, we’re interacting with algorithms that reward reactions.
The connection between outrage and spread isn’t just theoretical. A 2024 study in Science found that outrage-evoking content spreads as well as — and sometimes better than — accurate information. The researchers showed that posts designed to trigger moral outrage were shared widely across platforms and that people were more likely to share such content without reading it first, suggesting outrage can drive spread independent of truth. (3)
In fact, researchers found that content designed to trigger moral outrage was shared more often, even without users reading it first. (I can’t tell you how many times someone got outraged or reacted to a post of mine and it was immediately obvious they hadn’t actually READ what was posted. (4)
Questions Worth Asking Ourselves
Rather than declaring someone else wrong (which is easy), here are questions that might lead us deeper:
• Why did this particular moment hit me so emotionally?
• Am I reacting from a place of fear, frustration, or a desire to be “right”?
• Is my first impulse to post or to process?
• What happens if I slow down before responding — even by 24 hours?
• If someone only knew my faith from my online reactions, what would they believe about Jesus?
A Christian Response to a Culture of Outrage
As followers of Jesus, we’re called to be “quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to become angry” (James 1:19). That’s not just good advice, it’s a counter‑cultural posture. Paul encouraged the church to speak truth in love (Ephesians 4:15), not righteous rage online.
Jesus never avoided truth. He also never reacted impulsively. He offered clarity, compassion, and calm resolve, even in the face of conflict. He modeled a way of engaging that listens first, discerns deeply, and responds lovingly. We don’t have to be against culture to be distinct from the culture’s pace of outrage.
More Than a Halftime Show
This isn’t about any particular event or performance. Whatever cultural moment you’re thinking about, from music to politics to entertainment , the response reveals more about our hearts than the subject itself.
Culture will continue to present moments worthy of reflection, laughter, disagreement, and even mourning. But if our first impulse is always outrage, we might be worshiping our own emotional reactions more than we are worshiping Christ.
When every cultural moment immediately provokes outrage, something subtle but serious may be happening beneath the surface. Outrage can begin to function like a form of worship. Not in the sense that we bow to it, but in the sense that it becomes the thing that commands our attention, shapes our language, and dictates our reactions.
Worship, at its core, is about what we give weight to. What we center our emotions around. What we instinctively defend. When outrage becomes our first response, not our last, measured one, we may be granting our emotional reactions an authority they were never meant to have.
Outrage feels powerful. It gives us clarity, identity, and moral certainty. It makes us feel awake and aligned with “the right side.” But it also short-circuits discernment. Instead of asking, “What is true?” or “How should I respond faithfully?” we jump straight to “How do I signal my stance?” In that moment, the goal subtly shifts from faithfulness to expression.
Jesus never denied emotion, but He never let emotion lead Him. He felt compassion, anger, grief, and righteous zeal, yet none of those emotions replaced obedience, wisdom, or love. His reactions were always submitted to the Father, never broadcast for validation.
So the concern isn’t that we feel strongly about cultural moments. Feeling deeply is human. The concern is when our emotional reaction becomes louder than our devotion, faster than our prayer life, and more visible than our love. When that happens, outrage stops being a response and starts becoming a posture.
And worship always shapes us into the image of whatever we place at the center.
If Christ is truly central, then even our strongest reactions must bow to Him, slowed down, examined, and reshaped by truth, humility, and love. Otherwise, we may end up passionately defending our feelings while quietly drifting from the way of Jesus.
We can choose a different posture: rooted in truth, shaped by grace, and guided by the Spirit rather than by fear.
Sources
https://news.yale.edu/2021/08/13/likes-and-shares-teach-people-express-more-outrage-online?
https://phys.org/news/2024-11-outrage-social-media-misinformation.html
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