What is the most effective level of self-righteous outrage?

Whichever level leads to people maintaining common sense and keeping a handle on their damned kids and themselves.

A kid I was once very close with died on Memorial Day. There was a dollar-store beach ball that escaped the “swim zone”, and he simply had to retrieve it. Wouldn’t you know the river in that area was roped off for a reason? Rip currents are a thing. I’m incredibly sad and also very, very angry, because it was such a stupid thing that was completely preventable. If someone (including the kid) had said “Oops, the beach ball is gone. Guess we’ll have another hot dog instead!” Jacob would still be alive.

Fucking ridiculous.

@Seek: “Whichever level leads to people maintaining common sense and keeping a handle on their damned kids and themselves.”

I guess that is my question. The level of collective outrage can’t possibly be about making ourselves feel better, right?

If we don’t have this kid removed from her mother, what’s to stop her from visiting more zoos? The same thing will happen over and over!

Relevant

The fact that people talk about things is not “mob justice”. Mob justice would be a literal mob of people literally mobbing the woman.

The mom in this case made a public statement on Facebook. No one told her to do that. Am I supposed to be sad that she received backlash for thanking “god” for saving her child (instead of, say, the people who actually saved her child) at the same time she expressed no remorse or accepted no responsibility for her role in the tragedy? I’m not. Sue me.

You can make an online petition for anything, and it only takes “sign in with Facebook” to sign one. They are meaningless.

Here’s a petition to get NBA players to stop chewing on their mouthguards.

What level of outrage toward mouth guard chewing is acceptable?!?

More and more, I’m starting to think outrage and gossip are really just about bonding. We tell each other that we’re appalled to make sure our social group agrees with our take on what’s right.

I have a lot of feelings about self-righteous outrage from having felt a lot of self-righteous outrage, but my experiences have mostly revolved around my health stuff, so I’m going to answer in that context rather than the gorilla story, if that’s alright.

Anger is a phase in the process of grief for a reason. It’s an easy emotion to feel, for one. Especially self-righteous anger. It’s an emotion that keeps you innocent. You get to be a victim. Everything is someone else’s fault.

When dealing with my health, there was nobody to blame. I was sick for no reason. I had all these emotions and no target for them. There wasn’t someone I could yell at in order to have an outlet so I searched around for semi-related things that do have a villain and I yelled about those things. I’ve yelled a lot about universal healthcare and those bastards who don’t want me to have it. I’ve yelled about pseudoscience, like anti-vaxxers and naturopathy. At times I feel I’ve made up problems where there aren’t any just so I can yell some more: I got angry about a webcomic I saw that minimized physical health problems in order to illustrate mental health problems, I got angry that “she looks unhealthy” is the default argument for why a body type isn’t attractive, I get angry about concepts like karma and that we teach kids that bad things only happen to bad people etc etc etc etc.

It has served a purpose in my life. It gave me an outlet that made me feel good, like the heroine in a me vs. the world story, during a time when I needed to feel good because I was mostly just feeling bad. That’s not useless.

After awhile it gets poisonous.

I think you do get a little dopamine hit from writing a good ole rant about why somebody is so wrong and you’re so right. Especially if you post it online and other people agree with you. That gets addictive. You want that feeling again but in order to have it you need to find something to rant about. Once you’re actively seeking things to be angry about, it is not helpful anymore. It is destructive at that point.

I had a turning point about, oh maybe a year ago. There was an ad put out by the CDC warning against smoking. They had a woman tell her story – she’d gotten colon cancer, she’d had her colon removed and had an ileostomy, she spent a few minutes talking about the downsides of having an ileostomy. It was a scare tactic ad of course. It got posted on one of the IBD Facebook groups I’m a part of, and everybody was outraged. For them, an ileostomy was something that gave them their lives back and they didn’t like seeing it talked about like it was something unpleasant. There was a petition to remove the ad and everything. I just couldn’t feel the same outrage though. For the general population, having to have an ileostomy is a nightmare scenario. It works as a scare tactic. I don’t really see anything offensive about that.

I realized immediately that in the past I probably would have been outraged by this and that this was a sign I was making progress. Since then I’ve tried really hard not to use anger to comfort me, but I still fall back into the trap sometimes. It feels like letting go of the anger is a fundamental part of my healing process. Feeling those strong emotions fade and become less fresh, like a wound fading into a scar.

It’s a combination of the 24/7 news cycle and the compartmentalization of society due to social media.

The 24/7 news cycle trivializes the important and blows the trivial out of proportion.
Social media helps confine your conversations to like minded individuals, and companies like Google and Facebook customize what you see to your personal biases.

In a society where Kim Kardashian and Donald Trump are virtually equal, “outrage” is just another word for “entertainment”.

If something doesn’t happen to knock this issue off the top of the news garbage heap soon, expect Congress to call for hearings.
Republicans will seek to de-fund zoos as family un-friendly, hazardous drains on taxpayer funds.
Democrats will seek to ramp up federal funding for child care, single parents and endangered species protection.

Or Ivanka Trump could have a wardrobe malfunction and a week from now the Cincinnati zoo return to being a decent tourist destination, not a major news item.

This is such a great loaded question I’m hoping it doest break under its own weight before I get a chance to answer. It’s so loaded in fact the if it were a 19 year old woman on a college campus it wouldn’t stand a chance. Hang on. Almost home

I guess it’s better to not take responsibility and say “things happen” to make one feel better about a terrible situation.

Sorry for the double post. The most effective way to combat the self-righteous is to be self-righteous back at ‘em.~

@DoNotKnowMuch Jesus, you are smug.

Start a Facebook Page to then express your self-righteous outrage.

@canidmajor Thank you for linking that article.

@Seek I see this incident as mob justice in the 21st century. The woman was mobbed. It’s plain and simple. The whole world mobbed her.

***

Was the mother responsible? I don’t know. I wasn’t there nor have I read a reliable investigation into the incident.

Is this a tragedy? Yes. It’s okay to be upset.

How far should we let our being upset go? I prefer to limit it to observing my own life and making any corrections I feel are necessary. It is not my place to condemn a stranger for something I did not see first hand. I am not her judge, jury, nor executioner.

***

I believe I have witnessed mass hysteria in the past few days. Emotions have run rampant. It’s fine to have emotions, but we must each personally regulate how we use our emotions.

I don’t think talking is beyond the rational response level. People have always discussed the news and made water-cooler judgments. Our water cooler areas are bigger now, but it’s effectively the same thing.

Now, if someone tracks down her house and eggs her car, we can discuss whether that’s an irrational response.

@Hawaii_Jake mob justice is what happened to Emmett Till. This is not mob justice. People expressing disgust at a disgusting woman is not mob justice.

@Seek What I have seen on the Internet in the past few days is not rational talk. Discussion is a welcome thing when the people involved in the conversation are willing to hear responses. I’ve seen very little of that. I’ve seen a lot of preaching with no attempt to hear any responses.

@trolltoll I think we are seeing a new form of mob justice. I think we are witnessing the birth of it. It’s not completely new with this situation. It’s been building for the past 6 or 7 years with the advent of social media.

@Hawaii_Jake I am just bewildered by your logic. What kind of backlash has the lady (I’m going to start calling her zoo-mom) experienced? Is she or her children in imminent danger? Has she been threatened? Are people harassing her in the street?

Calling public outcry “mob justice” only trivializes the severity of actual mob justice. Want to see real examples of mob justice? Look up “necklacing.” Look up the murder of Du’a Aswad.

@trolltoll You are investing a lot more energy into this situation than I am. I find it interesting. It may even be important. What happened to the gorilla is important to the other gorillas in the zoo, to the zoo and its patrons. In my every day life, this simply isn’t important enough for me to get too upset.

I’ll sign off now.

Thanks.

^perfect example

I’ve seen a lot of preaching with no attempt to hear any responses.

@Hawaii_Jake: “lol y u mad tho”

Those who rattle sabre loude…no, that’s not it
He whose sabre rattled longe…shit, that’s not it either
The one who bangs drum loudest may face complaints from a disgruntled neighb…oh fuck it!!

@Hawaii_Jake – I think you may be overlooking a few important things:

1. Many of us conservatives who want to see this mother pay were there. We may have forgotten when we first commented, but now that we remember…we were there. The mother not only turned her back on her child, she put a step stool next to the fence and went to the bathroom to smoke crack.

2. We also have been lifelong gorilla and animal rights activists. We’re vegans who spend much of our time fighting against the destruction of gorillas’ natural habitats, and are quite upset that a crack whore ended up killing a gorilla.

3. If we (the public) can get enough signatures and present enough of an outcry, maybe we can convince the authorities to investigate this woman. We support big-government intrusion into parenting, and want to make sure this woman is meeting those standards. Since she isn’t, justice will likely be served if the boy were taken from the family. Separating a child from a family is usually a good way to fix the situation. It might also result in us finding out that the gorilla isn’t quite dead. Maybe it is just injured, but is inspired by the boy being separated from family to make a recovery. (Note: A made-for-television movie would be ideal here!)

4. We are all parents and have all overcome standard human traits to develop infallible memories and rid ourselves of confirmation bias. We have raised our kids without ever having our kids leave our sight for longer than it takes to blink or sneeze. Kids who are injured are not the result of childhood or natural curiosity or development – it’s unholy, unmonitored activity that means neglect. Parents should be investigated immediately.

5. All of our efforts will have a positive effect on society. We don’t need people being devastated by accidents, personal loss, and other tragedies. People should be reminded by public shaming, loss of children, and hopefully criminal and civil lawsuits.

6. Sure, our public outrage appears to be greater than other “issues”, such as gun violence, police brutality, and poverty. But that’s because we feel more strongly about the zoo incident. This is something we can actually do something about. Having that kid from his mother’s arms will be sweet!

So, please people. Let’s figure this out together. Can we ramp it up even more? I’m sensing that some people are not in this for the long haul. Do I smell the rot of compassion?

If this straw man gets any bigger he’s going to get hit by lightning and self-immolate.

My fluther experience over the last couple days:

trolltoll: You know I think this lady is kind of a piece of shit.
handful of people: I agree!
everyone else: OH MY GOD WHY ARE YOU SELF-RIGHTEOUSLY ATTACKING HER SHE DID NOTHING WRONG WE ARE ALL THIS WOMAN!!!!!

@seek…it is getting to be of Burning Man proportions