Image via Complex Original
"It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing." When Macbeth utters these lines, he's talking about the totality of life. Today, we can apply these words to the Internet.
The Internet outrage machine is good for page views; it isn’t very good for anything else. It's always the same thing: a celebrity says something stupid, or a new light is shed on an old atrocity. Like this week, an undergraduate student wrote a shitty think piece. The outrage machine can be thrown into motion by something as small as a tweet or as large as institutionalized acceptance of sexual assault. Usually, the result is the same: nothing changes and the Internet finds something new to bitch about.
Sports, government, entertainment, finance: every sphere of life offers us something to get mad at. The process is always the same: We learn about the terrible thing; we tell our friends about the terrible thing; we blog about the terrible thing; then we forget about the terrible thing. Quite often, the terrible thing that so enraged us still continues on long after our anger has subsided and we’ve turned our attention back to cat GIFs and hamsters eating burritos. Here are just a few things that the Internet got really upset about that hasn't changed at all. Here are 15 Internet Outrages That Changed Nothing.
Anger Over the U.S. Airways Vagina Tweet
Being a social media coordinator is sort of like being on the Iron Throne in Westeros. Most of your time is spent worrying about your inevitable demise. Trolls and comedians live to bait corporations into doing something incredibly stupid on social media. And, let's be honest, these brands do so much tweeting, that they often don't need the help of a Internet humorist to fuck up big time. Something wonderful happened after the airplane in the hoo-ha made the rounds: no one got fired. We may be coming out of the stone age of Twitter when the slightest gaffe sends dozens of twenty-somethings to the unemployment line. A social media coordinator may now be judged by the content of their character and not the content of one stray tweet. We probably haven't seen the last social media professional fired for a Twitter gaffe, but here's hoping that the rest of the web can let things go like U.S. Airways.
Anger Over Lena Dunham's Nudity
Bros everywhere continue to be outraged that there is a television show starring a woman who is not a super model. Their outrage reached fever pitch in season two when that non-model woman had a romantic liaison with an attractive man. It's one thing to show us an average looking man with attractive woman like on King of Queens, Everybody Loves Raymond, According to Jim, Grounded for Life, Still Standing, The Honeymooners, Curb Your Enthusiasm, and pretty much every sitcom ever, but why should the network that brought us Entourage force bros to look at women as anything other than objects? Why can't every show have naked hookers like True Detective, Game of Thrones, True Blood, The Sopranos, The Wire, Deadwood, and Carnivale? Bros are still fuming about this issue despite having three seasons to have gotten used to it, and as of press time there has been no indication that Lena Dunham intends on avoiding shots of herself naked eating cupcakes any time soon.
Anger at Chick-Fil-A's Homophobia
Many of us had to choose between our principles and our chicken sandwiches in 2012 after CEO Dan Cathy acknowledged in an interview with Baptist Press that his company had donated millions of dollars to anti-gay organizations. Protests followed, and then came the Mike Huckabee led protest of the protest, and then there was a protest of the protest of the protest. Individuals, groups, businesses, and even municipalities came down hard on Chick-Fil-A following Cathy's comments. Where did that get us? The next year, Cathy tweeted "Sad day for our nation. founding fathers would be ashamed of our generation to abandon wisdom of the ages re: cornerstone of strong societies," following the repeal of DOMA.
Okay, so he didn't change. Did Chick-Fil-A stop funding these homophobic organizations? It was thought that Chick-Fil-A had stopped funding anti-gay groups, but in reality the company simply created a new foundation to fund those groups. Okay, well, at least they lost some money, right? Wrong. Following the controversy, profits soared. Sales increased twelve percent in 2012 following Cathy's remarks, and have continued to grow ever since.
Anger Over Ben Affleck Cast as Batman
As a hardcore fan, if you want input, go watch Girls or Community. Television is the new home of fandoms, because television shows can live on niche audiences. If you can suck away a million viewers from Game of Thrones or Walking Dead, NBC will gladly let you run for seven seasons. Shows like that love their fans and care about what they have to say. Super hero franchises and sci-fi blockbusters need to do crazy business these days. What this means for your average nerdy tweeter is that no matter how many hashtags you muster up, you don't matter.
Anger At Abercrombie & Fitch Elitism
Perhaps the third time's a charm. When Abercrombie CEO Mike Jeffries was quoted saying that his company had no interest in "fat" or "not-so-cool" kids wearing his clothes, people were upset. People were very angry when he made these comments... in 2006. What's that? You remember getting angry about those same comments in 2013? You did. Those comments resurfaced, and had the same effect as it did in 2006: absolutely none. May 2013 was not easy for Abercrombie: bloggers blogged, the brand suffered, and even Ellen herself spoke out against Jeffries and his store. Despite all that, the backlash never translated to a dip in profits. Abercrombie didn't even suffer in that quarter: the company posted a year over year increase in Q2 of 2013.
Anger Over the Duke Lacrosse Scandal
To hear William D. Cohan talk about his book, The Price of Silence, is pretty depressing. Several members of Duke's lacrosse team were wrongfully accused of sexual assault, but that isn't the depressing part. Cohan paints a picture of a culture of entitlement and privilege that created a a group of young men known for arrogance and destruction. Duke's lacrosse players at the time were guilty of 25 percent of the university's disorderly conduct cases, 50 percent of noise violations, and a 33 percent of open container violations. They threw a combination of parental and university provided cash at booze, drugs, strippers, and anything else they damn well pleased. Despite their poor behavior, after their acquittal, each of the three main defendants received millions in settlements from Duke. The district attorney who tried to prosecute the boys was disbarred and the woman involved was publicly shamed as the athletes went on to careers in business and finance. Even though the athletes were proven innocent, the Internet seemed to think that this case was going to result in some soul searching regarding the role of athletics on college campuses and the powerful forces that protect student-athletes. Cohan's book confirms what you probably already guessed. It's back to business as usual for the big business of college sports, and though sexual assault allegations among student-athletes persist, that conversation doesn't.
Anger Over Diverse Commercials
There's a segment of the population that lies in wait on social media just to complain any time a corporation promotes diversity. Whether we're talking about the J.C. Penny same-sex Mother's and Father's Day ads, the interracial Cheerios commercial, or the Coca-Cola's multi-lingual "America the Beautiful" commercial, racists and racists who think they aren't racist come together to sound incredibly stupid on social media. Not only do these commercials appeal to the majority of the country that isn't bigoted, but this outrage provides free publicity. Being known as the brand racists hate is pretty good for PR these days, and the Internet loves to share lists of tweets from backwards, stupid people being backwards and stupid.
Anger Over Benghazi
No amount of outrage can change something that never happened. Four Americans died in Benghazi in 2012. That happened. Muslim extremists broke into the embassy and killed four Americans. That happened. After numerous hearings, subpoenas, and committees, it is pretty clear that a cover-up did not happen. In the age of the Internet, some people are simply incapable of accepting that bad things simply happen. There has to be a cover up, a conspiracy, some way to conform inexplicably painful events to our worldview. For the last two years, the right has been attempting to dig up new information about Benghazi even though it looks like all the truths have been told and all the digging has been dug. Tea Party tweeters have attached #benghazi to just about every kind of tweet you could imagine in hopes of drilling deeper, even though that well has run dry. This week, the Republicans in Congress have decided to form yet another committee to investigate Benghazi, and this time they are going to question Secretary of State John Kerry, who was not secretary at the time of the killings. That should finally clear things up...
Anger at Phil Robertson's Homophobia
I had the pleasure of spending Christmas in my hometown of Stewartstown, Pennsylvania (Go Rams!), and I can tell you that in rural America there wasn't much Duck Dynasty outrage, rather, the outrage was against those who would criticize the Robertson clan. While my friends in New York asked "What's Duck Dynasty?" followed by "Are they really going to let him stay that stuff?," my former high school classmates took to Facebook (they aren't on Twitter) to #standwithphil. All of this was resolved shortly after Christmas, after most of the Duck Dynasty merchandise (over fifty items at my local Wal-Mart) had been purchased by conservatives who opted to Stand with Phil vis a vis their pocket book. After A&E had sold all of the Duck Commander loofahs it was going to sell, the network welcomed the Robertson patriarch back into the fold. Liberal outrage at Phil Robertson turned out to be about as useful as anger toward Larry the Cable Guy. If you aren't the target audience, don't expect your voice to count for much.
Anger at Terry Richardson
In 2010, the first allegations against Terry Richardson surfaced, and every few months we get new evidence that the guy is a scumbag. Styleite has put together a timeline of allegations against Richardson beginning in 2004: "his intern Alex [went] down on him from inside a trash can while wearing a diamond 'Slut' tiara ('It's Sesame Street!' Mr. Richardson explained with a chuckle.)"
And reports are that he'll still ask models to take their clothes off for the casting and in some cases give him sexual favors. Jezebel published a list of who has worked with Richardson since the first allegations surfaced, and he has worked a lot. Twitter makes the rounds bashing Terry Richardson about as often as it goes after LeBron James or Sarah Palin.
Anger at Joseph Kony
Over a week in 2012, the "KONY 2012" video amassed 100 million views. Two weeks later, the video's creator Jason Russell had a psychotic episode; he ran naked down the street near his San Diego home screaming obscenities and banging his head against the sidewalk, and it was a video that also went viral. Russell had never endured such an episode before; doctors chalked it up to PTSD. These two videos launched a barrage of thinkpieces. Russell's organization was painted as everything from a charitable game-changer to a manipulative cult. What began as a united "we've got to get this guy," morphed into a navel gazing examination of communication in the Internet age.
Two years later, Invisible Children, Russell's group, is still working to get Joseph Kony. Regardless of what you think of Russell or his group, awareness has been raised, and scholarships, schools, and various other types of aid have been funded. However, Joseph Kony is still at large; his army of child soldiers, the Lord's Resistance Army, is still active. Invisible Children's web traffic and Russell's mental state have returned to pre-Kony 2012 levels, and the hunt continues. As Russell put it, "We have failed. And we should feel like a failure until we get him. We've rebuilt schools and funded scholarships and inspired kids here but our number one goal has not been achieved and it is achievable. It's only one man. He now has only 200 fighters, three commanders. We have put a man on the moon. We can do this."
Anger Over Income Inequality
Around the time that Occupy Wall Street started to become a phenomenon, memes like this were all over Facebook. There was a renewed focus on the disparity between the income of the one percent and other Americans. Statistics were thrown around and dastardly quotes from Papa John's CEO John Schnatter and Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan were plastered on Facebook walls in disgust. How far have we come since then? CEOs now make even more than their employees (approximately 275 times more), corporate personhood has been further entrenched by the Supreme Court, and unions are weaker than ever. But, hey, we bet that some of those memes really stung. Some CEOs may have even used their money to dry their tears.
Anger at the NSA
So what has changed since Edward Snowden introduced us to the vastness of the surveillance state? Not very much. In January, President Obama addressed the nation and promised some changes in the way that the NSA does business. A coalition of privacy and civil liberties groups came together and recommended forty-three key changes. President Obama ignored almost all of them. Since then, Obama has made some minor changes including two executive orders: accessing metadata requires court approval and can only be accessed by those who are "two hops" away from a suspect (rather than the previous three.) You can probably hear our sarcastic slow clap through your computer.
There are further limitations on surveillance currently being considered by Congress. The House is currently working on a stronger set of measures that Obama initially suggested, but that legislation still needs to clear both chambers and the President's desk to be signed into law. The Senate Intelligence Committee, meanwhile, has moved to codify current NSA policies ahead of any potential changes; in late December of last year, the Senate voted to extend warrantless surveillance through 2017.
Anger Over the End of Net Neutrality
Odds are that some tech savvy person in your life has been sounding the alarm on net neutrality. Net neutrality, the idea that all Internet traffic should flow at the same speed, has been in danger for years—and it finally met its match. Despite the outpouring of protest across every social media platform, the FCC has gone ahead and ended it anyway. What does this mean for you? Netflix, Verizon, and other companies who can pay higher rates to an ISP will see their sites move at much faster speeds than those who can't afford it. The fear here is that the democratization of the web will effectively come to an end. Just like politics, the Internet may be up for sale to the highest bidder. Sadly, protests don't line pockets, and it looks like net neutrality is a thing of the past.
Anger Over Trayvon Martin's Murder
Odds are you're already pretty familiar with this one, but just in case you forgot: George Zimmerman murdered Trayvon Martin and got away with it. The "Stand Your Ground" laws that set the stage for his acquittal are still on the books in Florida. What you may not know is that the conservative-corporate advocacy group ALEC (American Legislative Exchange Council) is still actively pushing "Stand Your Ground" laws across the country. In fact, this year, Florida lawmakers have voted to expand the state's Stand Your Ground laws. This is one of those cases truly worth getting outraged about, but can outrage turn into policy change when the biggest corporations in America are on the other side of the issue?
