The Age of Kayfabe Outrage

Writers like Robert Kaplan and Jaron Lanier have observed that society has traded analysis for outrage, swapping measured thought for emotional spectacle. I left Twitter—sorry, X—years ago to escape that hurricane of indignation, only to find the same moral theater thriving on Threads. Outrage, it turns out, is social media’s cash crop.

This made me think of the Old and New Testaments, where prophets, Paul, and even Jesus in the temple showed no shortage of righteous fury. But their outrage was different—it was rooted in moral clarity and the courage to confront hypocrisy, not in the dopamine mechanics of public performance.

Today’s outrage is a knockoff. It mimics the moral fire of the prophets but burns with cheaper fuel: vanity, self-branding, and the need to belong to a digital mob. It’s not the world of moral outrage we inhabit—it’s the world of fake outrage, a kind of performative fury that convinces even its actors of its authenticity. Like professional wrestlers in Vince McMahon’s ring, we’ve forgotten how to remove the mask.

This is kayfabe morality: outrage as entertainment, conviction as cosplay. And unlike the prophetic anger of George Carlin or Isiah, which illuminated hypocrisy, ours merely monetizes it.