As long as we’re doing lists, why not take a moment and remember the stuff that ticked us off the most last year — at least, on social media.
Slate has taken the trouble to do just that, and even provided an interactive calendar so we can see what outraged us the most each day of the year:
Following the news in 2014 is a bit like flying a kite in flat country during tornado season. Every so often, a whirlwind of outrage touches down, sowing destruction and chaos before disappearing into the sky.
These conditions are hardly new. Over the past decade or so, outrage has become the default mode for politicians, pundits, critics and, with the rise of social media, the rest of us. When something outrageous happens—when a posh London block installs anti-homeless spikes, or when Khloé Kardashian wears a Native American headdress, or, for that matter, when we read the horrifying details in the Senate’s torture report—it’s easy to anticipate the cycle that follows: anger, sarcasm, recrimination, piling on; defenses and counterattacks; anger at the anger, disdain for the outraged; sometimes, an apology … and on to the next. Twitter and Facebook make it easier than ever to participate from home. And the same cycle occurs regardless of the gravity of the offense, which can make each outrage feel forgettable, replaceable. The bottomlessness of our rage has a numbing effect.
This desensitization makes it tough to clock exactly how modern outrage functions. Is it as awful as it sometimes feels? More useful than it might seem? Should we be rending our garments about our constant rending of garments? Or should we embrace the new responsiveness of the social and hypersensitive Web?
And so—in an effort to answer these and other questions—we resolved to keep track of what people got outraged about every day of 2014…
Go check it out. But please, don’t get all mad all over again…
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