# 'Angertainers' are dividing society: Author Ed Coper explains why we fall for 'rage bait'

An episode of [Good Weekend Talks](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1501054889), 15 May 2026, 41 min.

Audio: https://pdst.fm/e/traffic.omny.fm/d/clips/88b564ea-a9a6-4751-910a-a5d800019396/938e5ca5-7771-4bc2-852a-ab8300272ea4/75b71cfc-3d4e-4be9-82d6-b44a01894571/audio.mp3?utm_source=Podcast&in_playlist=5249b1b2-6224-4d5a-b1d1-ab8300272f0a

Social media was once harnessed by Barack Obama to spread hope. Now “angertainers” are exploiting our human instinct to seek threat to divide society and to build their own cultural, political and social capital, often based on misinformation and lies. They create content for platforms that reward stunts, insults and anger – in the process, distorting reality and hijacking any possibility of a considered debate. In this episode of Good Weekend Talks, Ed Coper, author of Angertainment: How Social Media Outrage Ruined Everything, explains how and why that happens, why you can't stop clicking on things that make you angry – and what we can all do about it. This conversation is hosted by Good Weekend senior writer Greg Callaghan. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

## Transcript

[0:14] S1: Nothing generates engagement on social media quite like rage bait
[0:18] S1: content designed to make people angry and outraged so that
[0:22] S1: they click, comment and share. Ed Cowper, a communications expert
[0:27] S1: and author of Anger Tainment How Social Media Ruined Everything,
[0:31] S1: says these platforms are making billions from normalizing anger and division,
[0:36] S1: creating an unprecedented threat to democracy, civil rights and social cohesion.
[0:41] S1: And as Cooper writes in an exclusive essay for the
[0:44] S1: magazine this week, this is happening not just in Trump's America,
[0:48] S1: but through manufactured anger much closer to home. I'm Konrad Marshall,
[0:52] S1: and from the Sydney Morning Herald and The age. Welcome
[0:55] S1: to Good Weekend Talks, featuring weekly, in-depth conversations with fascinating people.
[1:01] S1: Ed Cowper has advised everyone from Greta Thunberg to Shakira
[1:05] S1: to the historic teal movement in Australian politics, and he
[1:08] S1: joins us today for a chat about everything from the
[1:11] S1: manosphere to the way the digital world holds up a
[1:14] S1: toxic mirror to humanity's worst attributes, from narcissism to racism.
[1:19] S1: Today's conversation is hosted by Good Weekend senior writer Greg Callahan.
[1:25] S2: Thanks, Konrad, and welcome, Ed. Thanks, Greg. Now, the 2025
[1:30] S2: Oxford Word of the year was rage bait. It refers
[1:34] S2: to online content, video articles, posts designed to manipulate people
[1:38] S2: to make them angry and outraged in order to generate
[1:42] S2: high volumes of content. But it's on social media, as
[1:47] S2: your book outlines, that it's at its loudest, isn't it?
[1:52] S3: Yeah. That's right. And social media is really special amongst
[1:57] S3: all forms of media because it maps to something that
[2:01] S3: we've been carrying around in our head for a very
[2:03] S3: long time. In fact, for all of human history, we
[2:06] S3: actually have this inbuilt algorithm that takes in all the
[2:11] S3: information that we see around us and decides what should
[2:13] S3: we pay attention to? So obviously, in prehistoric times when
[2:17] S3: our brains were built, this was scanning the environment for threats.
[2:21] S3: And the reason it does that is because it's much
[2:25] S3: more important for our survival as a species, that we
[2:27] S3: pay attention to something that's threatening than something that is
[2:31] S3: pretty or otherwise entertaining. And so that's what we select for. Now,
[2:35] S3: social media has taken that ancient process and put it
[2:39] S3: into a platform that does that job for us. So
[2:42] S3: it scans all of the volume of information that's out
[2:45] S3: there and selects for things that we that it thinks
[2:49] S3: will pay most attention to. Now, what do we pay
[2:52] S3: most attention to? It's the things that make us angry,
[2:54] S3: the things that make us outraged because they feel like threats.
[2:58] S3: And so it's incredibly brutally effective machine to service these
[3:03] S3: sorts of outrage bait and rage bait, because that's what
[3:06] S3: our brains love. And we, the platforms know that our
[3:09] S3: brains are going to engage with that more so than
[3:11] S3: any other type of content.
[3:13] S2: Social media was pretty benign until the algorithm came in
[3:17] S2: around 2015, 2014, I think, wasn't it?
[3:22] S3: Yeah. Look, if you think back to the, you know,
[3:24] S3: the dark ages of, of when many of your listeners
[3:27] S3: might have had their first social media account, something like Facebook,
[3:31] S3: it was literally a chronological timeline of absolutely everything that
[3:35] S3: your great aunt posted for breakfast or, you know, so
[3:39] S3: and so just became friends with, you know, another person.
[3:42] S3: Everything was posted in chronological order. And that wasn't a
[3:46] S3: very good experience for people. And so the platforms decided
[3:51] S3: that they should, you know, determine what people see. And
[3:55] S3: that's where they built the algorithms in there to, to
[3:58] S3: choose for people what they thought they would engage with.
[4:02] S3: And that changed things dramatically. So in the early days
[4:05] S3: of the internet, it was really a hopeful place. It
[4:08] S3: was very optimistic. It was all about democratizing information, giving
[4:13] S3: equal access to everyone who could connect to the internet.
[4:16] S3: And a lot of the early years were built around
[4:19] S3: that feeling of hope. You know, if people remember Barack
[4:22] S3: Obama's 2008 presidential campaign in the US, that was the slogan.
[4:27] S3: And all of the commentary around it was how he
[4:30] S3: harnessed these new technologies, like the internet and social media,
[4:34] S3: for a very hopeful campaign and spend five minutes online. Now,
[4:38] S3: you would agree that it's a very hateful place. It is.
[4:41] S3: Now that the algorithms are in charge, much more built
[4:45] S3: for people who want to spread negative emotions than positive
[4:48] S3: emotions like hope. And so it's become a much darker
[4:51] S3: place as a result.
[4:52] S2: And meanwhile, the social media companies led by the tech
[4:55] S2: titans are making countless billions from creating division and from
[5:00] S2: creating anger and sowing, uh, you know, conflict in the community.
[5:05] S3: Yeah. Billions and sometimes trillions. You know, these these companies
[5:09] S3: were the first to become, uh, you know, three extra
[5:12] S3: zeros in on the end of their market capitalization, trillion
[5:15] S3: dollar companies. And the reason for that is we live
[5:19] S3: in what people call an attention economy. So you can
[5:24] S3: monetize things that get people's attention. And we are overloaded
[5:29] S3: with more information now than we ever have been in
[5:32] S3: human history. And so to win the attention economy, you
[5:36] S3: have to have things that are more attention grabbing, more extreme,
[5:40] S3: more able to incite emotion. And the platform's business model
[5:46] S3: is to find things that, uh, that grab people's attention
[5:50] S3: and then monetize that they get people's eyeballs and then
[5:53] S3: they sell those eyeballs to advertisers. So they didn't set
[5:56] S3: out to make these great anger machines and outrage machines.
[6:00] S3: That's just the logical conclusion of something that tries to
[6:03] S3: win the attention economy, because that's what gets our attention.
[6:07] S2: You're right in your book about the formula for creating
[6:11] S2: anger tainment. Can you break it down for us?
[6:15] S3: Yeah. And this is a this is an ancient formula
[6:18] S3: that's always been, uh, been true. It's just very effective
[6:22] S3: now that people can manipulate the platforms that service information.
[6:27] S3: And it's always been true that when something grabs your
[6:31] S3: attention and makes you feel an emotion, it can make
[6:36] S3: you do anything. So the formula is that emotion plus
[6:39] S3: attention that can create an intention. And this is what
[6:44] S3: advertisers have known since time immemorial. This is what political
[6:48] S3: operatives have known since time immemorial. If they can say
[6:52] S3: something attention grabbing, or show you a video that's very
[6:56] S3: entertaining and makes you feel an emotional reaction, you're really
[7:01] S3: at their mercy to be directed in in any way
[7:03] S3: they so choose. Now, often that's just to buy their
[7:06] S3: product or to vote for a certain candidate. But this
[7:10] S3: is an entire economy that has been built on this formula,
[7:13] S3: on social media, where people are going out of their
[7:17] S3: way now to create things that are both attention grabbing
[7:21] S3: and emotion inducing in order to build their own cultural, political,
[7:24] S3: and social capital.
[7:26] S2: Often based on misinformation and lies as well. Unfortunately, I
[7:30] S2: was speaking to a veteran editor the other day, and
[7:32] S2: she observed she'd never seen so much anger in the community. Um,
[7:37] S2: this at a time when where most of us are
[7:40] S2: better off than we were, that people are have, um,
[7:44] S2: better lives than they did and richer lives than they
[7:47] S2: did 30 years ago. What is creating all this anger?
[7:51] S2: You wonder, you know. And social media seems to be, uh,
[7:54] S2: normalizing it. You got a little bit of an insight
[7:58] S2: into this kind of from, uh, hostile division, this kind of, um,
[8:03] S2: easily bred anger at a, at a baseball match, didn't you?
[8:08] S3: Yeah. That's right. And now look, Greg, are you a
[8:11] S3: cricket fan?
[8:12] S2: No no no no.
[8:14] S3: Well, you can understand that cricket is quite a docile sport. Uh,
[8:18] S3: you know, if you go to a test match, you
[8:20] S3: generally sit there for five days. And really, it's about
[8:23] S3: sitting in the sun, maybe having a having a beer
[8:25] S3: in hand and casually watching, you know, the game meander by. Um,
[8:30] S3: baseball's kind of similar. Usually, you know, baseball is all
[8:34] S3: about going out there to summer sport. It casually meanders
[8:38] S3: by and, and this was kind of my understanding of,
[8:40] S3: of baseball. Um, but in 2015, uh, in the major
[8:47] S3: league baseball. It got to the playoffs and there's a
[8:52] S3: team from LA. The Los Angeles Dodgers was playing the
[8:55] S3: New York Mets, and one of the players from the
[8:59] S3: Dodgers called Chase Utley. He did a very, uh, you know,
[9:03] S3: egregious slide into one of the Mets players and actually
[9:06] S3: broke his leg. Uh, it also changed the result of
[9:09] S3: the game. And the Dodgers won that game. That was
[9:12] S3: in LA. And the Mets fans were incensed. The whole
[9:17] S3: city was, you know, simmering with with tension. And the
[9:21] S3: next game was in New York. Now, my wife is
[9:25] S3: a Dodgers fan. She's from LA. And so she was
[9:27] S3: very keen to get out there and and see, you know,
[9:30] S3: this playoff baseball. And I went out there expecting it
[9:33] S3: to be fairly docile, like all of the baseball that
[9:36] S3: I'd expected that I'd experienced in the past. But what
[9:40] S3: I experienced when I got out there was more intense
[9:43] S3: than any other sporting event I'd ever been to. It was, uh.
[9:48] S3: The stadium was shaking with rage when this player, Chase Utley,
[9:52] S3: took the field. In fact, they didn't even let him
[9:55] S3: play because it just wasn't safe. Uh. And as the
[9:59] S3: crowd were baying for his blood, uh, they didn't get
[10:03] S3: that satisfaction. And they're all of a sudden is my
[10:07] S3: wife in her Dodgers hat and, uh, and shirt. And
[10:11] S3: they turned their attention to, to her, you know, and
[10:13] S3: I won't, I don't know what age rating this podcast has,
[10:16] S3: but there are a lot of expletives thrown their way.
[10:18] S3: People started throwing popcorn and really turning their anger on
[10:22] S3: my wife to the point where we actually had to
[10:24] S3: cover her up in Metzger, smuggle her out of the
[10:27] S3: stadium and get on the train to to leave. And
[10:31] S3: the reason I tell this story is the people who
[10:34] S3: are shouting abuse at my wife might have been otherwise very,
[10:39] S3: you know, friendly, nice people. They might have been her colleagues,
[10:42] S3: her co-workers, someone that she meets in a cafe. and
[10:45] S3: they're normally very pleasant. But because we were wrapped in
[10:49] S3: our identities around that sporting event, her in her Dodgers
[10:54] S3: gear and the other fans in the Mets gear, it
[10:57] S3: changed the entire nature of that relationship where it got
[11:00] S3: very hostile very quickly. Now, the relevance of this is
[11:05] S3: when we're in real life, we generally don't wear our
[11:08] S3: identities so obviously as we do in a sporting match.
[11:12] S3: But when we're on social media, we're generally putting on
[11:15] S3: the uniforms of our team. We're reducing the other people
[11:19] S3: to that very simple, one dimensional caricature of the other team.
[11:23] S3: You know, if I'm a Trump supporter and someone posts
[11:25] S3: something anti-Trump, all of a sudden we're dressed for battle.
[11:29] S3: Like the fans were in that baseball game. And the
[11:32] S3: same thing happens. Otherwise, docile and pleasant and nice people
[11:36] S3: will turn very hostile. So the reason this is such
[11:39] S3: a problem is that social media puts us constantly in
[11:43] S3: that environment, like we were in at Met Stadium, and
[11:47] S3: the results are just as hostile, just as violent, just
[11:49] S3: as predictable. And we live in that state every day
[11:53] S3: because we recreate the same kind of oppositional in-group and
[11:57] S3: outgroup reduced to our one dimensional team uniform rather than
[12:02] S3: three dimensional humans like we are in, you know, our
[12:05] S3: day to day lives.
[12:07] S2: A never ending, rowdy town hall, indeed. Uh, in the
[12:11] S2: what I'd call now the disunited states. Maga followers, you know,
[12:15] S2: castigate Democrat supporters as Democrats and liberals as libtards. I mean,
[12:21] S2: there's always been a bit of, um, you know, healthy
[12:24] S2: tension between Democrats and, and Republican supporters in America. But
[12:29] S2: now it's, it's quite it's vitriolic. And similarly, Trump supporters
[12:34] S2: are called fascists and enemies of democracy and, and decency, um, by, um,
[12:41] S2: people who are opposed to him. A public discourse has
[12:46] S2: deteriorated so much that, you know, Trump has been able
[12:50] S2: to get away with making fun of a disabled person.
[12:54] S2: He called a woman on Air Force One a journalist piggie, disgracefully,
[13:00] S2: not one male journalist are jumped to her defense. Uh.
[13:06] S2: Is it? Can we blame social media on this sort
[13:09] S2: of sharp deterioration in in in public discourse and for
[13:12] S2: that matter, etiquette and manners.
[13:15] S3: Well, we can in a word, we can, because social
[13:18] S3: media rewards those who are most attention grabbing. So what
[13:23] S3: is Trump expert at very good at getting attention and
[13:27] S3: and that's an exact example that you, uh, recall there,
[13:32] S3: the anecdote on the plane, that female journalist that he said,
[13:35] S3: quiet piggy too, had asked him about the Epstein files.
[13:39] S3: Now all of the column inches and airtime that night
[13:43] S3: was dedicated to the insult that Trump had had had
[13:47] S3: thrown at the Bloomberg journalist, not about the substance of
[13:50] S3: her question, which was a very legitimate one to raise.
[13:55] S3: And so this is what the social media ecosystem will reward.
[13:59] S3: It's going to focus on the trivia, not the substance.
[14:04] S3: And the more angry or emotive or, uh, you know,
[14:09] S3: outrageous you are, the more likely you are to get attention.
[14:14] S3: So Maga is ascendant in the US. Similar figures are
[14:19] S3: ascendant globally. We have obviously Pauline Hanson is is someone
[14:22] S3: in Australia who's very good at doing these kind of
[14:25] S3: stunts that get attention. You have Nigel Farage in the
[14:29] S3: UK who, uh, you know, we we will see, you know,
[14:33] S3: by the time listeners listen to this, there are local
[14:35] S3: elections there that he is polling at the top his
[14:38] S3: his anti-immigration party. Why are they in the ascendant? Because
[14:42] S3: they understand how social media works. They create their content
[14:46] S3: for platforms that reward stunts and reward insults and reward anger,
[14:52] S3: and the types of things that you would normally find
[14:54] S3: in a political discussion, like nuanced policy debate, uh, you know,
[14:59] S3: data research, uh, these things tank on social media. And
[15:05] S3: the more we get our information from social media, the
[15:07] S3: more we're going to hear from people like Trump and
[15:10] S3: less from from the real experts on an issue.
[15:12] S2: And we've also seen how sort of anger on social
[15:16] S2: media is being, um, generated by a trivial, uh, concern
[15:21] S2: such as, and you give the example of the, the
[15:24] S2: Cracker Barrel logo in, in your book. Tell us about that.
[15:29] S3: Yeah. And I think it's really important for people to
[15:30] S3: understand that what seems like outrage on social media is
[15:34] S3: very often manufactured. It's coordinated and people will agree. Let's
[15:41] S3: make this thing an outrage. And so the Cracker Barrel
[15:44] S3: story is a perfect example of that. Cracker barrel is
[15:47] S3: a highway restaurant in America. A lot of truckers might
[15:51] S3: stop there on their way from A to B, uh,
[15:54] S3: and very popular with, uh, the types of people who
[15:57] S3: generally are supporting Maga and Trump in the US. Um,
[16:01] S3: now their sales were declining. They did what a lot
[16:03] S3: of brands do. They refreshed their look and feel and
[16:07] S3: their logo. Uh, they updated the font of Cracker Barrel. Uh,
[16:12] S3: they dropped, there was a character called Uncle Hershel sitting
[16:15] S3: on a barrel, very old timey kind of folksy aesthetic.
[16:19] S3: They dropped that and modernized the brand. Now the internet's
[16:23] S3: reaction was extreme. It dominated social media. It was outraged
[16:28] S3: that levelling accusations of the woke takeover of a cherished
[16:33] S3: American icon. You know, these are crimes against Humanity. Let's
[16:38] S3: fire the CEO. It's ridiculous. But it was effective. It
[16:42] S3: created so much noise that Cracker Barrel actually lost a significant, uh,
[16:47] S3: value from its share price because of the backlash. And
[16:49] S3: they reversed course. They dropped the logo change. They made
[16:54] S3: a phone call to Trump, a groveling phone call to say,
[16:57] S3: thank you very much for your feedback. You're right. We're
[16:59] S3: not going to change the logo. Now, of course, what
[17:02] S3: we can unpick in all of that is these mega networks,
[17:07] S3: who are all connected by WhatsApp groups where they decide
[17:11] S3: what is the outrage of the day going to be today?
[17:14] S3: What can we make into a culture war issue? How
[17:17] S3: is a logo change actually related to a culture war issue?
[17:21] S3: But if they can do that, they know they're going
[17:22] S3: to win social media. They coordinate their talking points and
[17:26] S3: then they pour gasoline on on the outrage and it
[17:30] S3: spreads like wildfire. And it's very it's very, very powerful.
[17:35] S3: Companies will hide their head in shame now at the
[17:37] S3: fear that they might get the same treatment as Cracker Barrel.
[17:40] S3: That's real power. And it's all produced by social media outrage.
[17:44] S2: And yet it's being perpetuated by an angry, um, calculating few.
[17:50] S2: I'm sure if you did a survey in America about
[17:53] S2: Cracker Barrel logo, the vast majority of people wouldn't give
[17:56] S2: a flying f you about it. Really. It's just, um,
[18:02] S2: one of these sort of confected outrages you mentioned.
[18:04] S3: Of course. And you know what else they don't give
[18:06] S3: an F about is, is any of the other issues
[18:09] S3: that dominate social media, what bathroom people can use trans
[18:12] S3: athletes in college sports, immigration, these are the things that
[18:16] S3: dominate social media. But then you look at the polling
[18:19] S3: and it's a very small minority of people who hold
[18:22] S3: those views. And that's the problem. It distorts all reality.
[18:25] S2: Yes, it does distort reality. And yet the Trump administration,
[18:29] S2: of course, has been able to bully universities. It's and
[18:33] S2: large companies about their, um, uh, equal employment policies, their
[18:38] S2: diversity and equity programs, and even most recently the voting
[18:43] S2: rights of minorities. And they seem to be getting no pushback.
[18:47] S2: And this leads me to a line of a show
[18:51] S2: that we were both talking about prior to the interview today.
[18:54] S2: And that is the very excellent Australian crime drama Mr. Inbetween.
[19:00] S2: There's an iconic line by the main character, Ray Shoesmith,
[19:06] S2: and it is the world is full of assholes, right?
[19:10] S2: You do realise that? And you know why? Because people
[19:14] S2: let them get away with it. My question to you
[19:17] S2: is why are so many of us and I include
[19:21] S2: the legacy media in this, letting them get away with it.
[19:24] S3: Well, it's a new playbook and it's just been very
[19:28] S3: confronting for people to catch up to and to adjust to.
[19:32] S3: And we kind of have our old lens on when
[19:35] S3: we view it, but what we need to do is
[19:38] S3: update the way that we see our new information ecosystem.
[19:43] S3: And that's really why I wrote the book. I feel
[19:45] S3: like we need this understanding to navigate our way through
[19:50] S3: our social media based information ecosystem. So where is the
[19:54] S3: the media? Traditionally, legacy media would be focused on giving
[20:01] S3: equal hearing to both sides and, you know, reporting on
[20:05] S3: the shared facts. And, uh, yeah, you know, the, the
[20:09] S3: events of the day, this turned out to be easily
[20:13] S3: manipulated by people who knew how social media worked, uh,
[20:18] S3: because they have noise and volume and the way that
[20:23] S3: legacy media traditionally viewed an issue was, look, all of
[20:26] S3: these people over here are very angry about an issue.
[20:29] S3: Let's talk about that. Let's report on that. Now you
[20:32] S3: can manufacture that. You can have robots do it for
[20:35] S3: you on social media. You don't even need real people.
[20:38] S3: Or you can have a small number of real people
[20:40] S3: appearing much larger than than they are. And so it's
[20:43] S3: been a very slow and painful process for people to
[20:46] S3: realize that you can manufacture what looks like public opinion.
[20:51] S3: And the other thing that that Trump understands that a
[20:54] S3: lot of others don't is that any attention counts, negative
[20:59] S3: or positive. So he might do something like call a
[21:03] S3: journalist a pig, and we report on that and say
[21:06] S3: that was very inappropriate. He doesn't care as long as
[21:10] S3: you're talking about it. Negative attention counts just as much
[21:13] S3: as positive attention in the attention economy. And people in
[21:17] S3: politics have been slow to realize that people in the
[21:19] S3: media have been slow to realize that, and we need
[21:22] S3: to update our understanding of how information travels now, how
[21:26] S3: opinions are formed now. So you think, you know, and
[21:29] S3: to to quote Ray Shoesmith back at you, you know,
[21:32] S3: he's as a hit man, he would say, my job's
[21:36] S3: not to collect the money. I'm just here to make
[21:37] S3: you regret not giving it when you had the chance to.
[21:41] S3: And it's a little bit similar, right? So these people
[21:43] S3: who do rage bait people mistake them for being genuinely
[21:47] S3: interested in the issues they're talking about. They're not. One
[21:50] S3: of the reformed rage baiters is Ashley Sinclair. She, um, she,
[21:55] S3: she had one of Elon Musk's babies. Um, quite a
[21:58] S3: few women can lay claim to that, but, uh, she
[22:01] S3: now regrets all of the rage and she called it
[22:04] S3: performative viciousness. Now, these people aren't angry. They know that
[22:08] S3: if they can appear angry and appear vicious and induce
[22:13] S3: that emotion in others, they get rewarded. There are rewards
[22:17] S3: for people. They can monetize it. They get influence, they
[22:19] S3: get political power. And so we can't mistake the substance
[22:25] S3: of what they're doing for the for the architecture around
[22:28] S3: it that is trying to elicit those reactions. So I
[22:30] S3: think that's something we just need to update our understandings around.
[22:43] S2: The traditional media have been up against what some the
[22:47] S2: former white House strategist Steve Bannon described as flooding the
[22:53] S2: zone with shit. Basically a game plan for overwhelming the
[22:57] S2: press and public with so much information, so much outrageous
[23:01] S2: content that the truth gets lost, or the pushback is
[23:04] S2: so much harder because you're moving from one confected crisis
[23:09] S2: to the next. It's been very, very successful.
[23:13] S3: It's disorienting. Right? Earlier, you listed some of Trump's, you know, indiscretions.
[23:19] S3: And I was thinking as you read them, I thought,
[23:20] S3: oh yeah, I forgot about that one because we're so
[23:23] S3: quickly on to the next one. And every day there
[23:26] S3: is a torrent of, uh, you know, scandal and outrage
[23:31] S3: and hysteria, and we can't keep up the way that
[23:35] S3: our legacy media is, is established is to, you know,
[23:38] S3: report on an issue over days. Well, social media flits
[23:41] S3: from one issue to the next in minutes, in seconds.
[23:44] S3: If I don't open my phone this morning, by tonight,
[23:46] S3: it'll be some other outrage that is trending. And we
[23:50] S3: can't keep up. Now, this is by design. This is
[23:53] S3: absolutely by design. And they've said as much. Steve Bannon's
[23:56] S3: one who coined that that that phrase flood the zone
[23:58] S3: with shit. Uh, and others like Stephen Miller, who's, you know,
[24:02] S3: the architect of a lot of Trump's, uh, platform have
[24:06] S3: admitted as much. They say we're going to keep you, uh,
[24:10] S3: our opposition and you, the media so busy trying to
[24:14] S3: catch their breath on the outrageous things that we're saying
[24:17] S3: that we can get away with anything over here on
[24:19] S3: the other side while you're not looking. We can do
[24:21] S3: whatever we want because there's no way you can keep
[24:23] S3: up with all of the torrent of outrage that's coming
[24:27] S3: your way.
[24:27] S2: And we saw in Australia how social media can stoke
[24:31] S2: social division as well when the voice referendum was happening.
[24:35] S2: The proposed voice to Parliament was it was simply a
[24:39] S2: consultative body that would advise Parliament on laws that directly
[24:44] S2: affected Indigenous Australians. That's all it was based on. Surveys
[24:50] S2: indicated that 75% of Australians supported the voice. And most
[24:56] S2: of us thought it would succeed, but it failed. With
[24:59] S2: only 39% of Australians voting for it. What happened between
[25:04] S2: those early surveys and the actual vote? Well, what.
[25:08] S3: Happened is Australians got a brutal lesson in the power
[25:11] S3: of anger, attainment, in the realization of a lot of
[25:15] S3: these themes that we've been talking about. Uh, the, the
[25:20] S3: idea of, of flooding the zone was really, something that
[25:25] S3: many Australians experience for the first time, right before their
[25:29] S3: very eyes. You know, as you suggested, it was quite
[25:32] S3: a modest proposal, a consultative body. But this became a
[25:37] S3: canvas that all sorts of social media outrage could be
[25:40] S3: painted on to. And so we saw all of the
[25:43] S3: features of anger tainment really come to bear on this
[25:47] S3: issue from the the networks of people spreading misinformation deliberately
[25:54] S3: to confuse people from AI generated content, uh, to right
[26:01] S3: through to bots that were built to spread it. You know,
[26:04] S3: I found one post that had only a, you know,
[26:07] S3: a handful of likes, but 52,000 shares on Facebook. Now,
[26:12] S3: you don't have 52,000 shares on a post that only
[26:14] S3: has a handful of likes. That's just not possible. Those
[26:17] S3: were bots, you know. But all of a sudden, it
[26:19] S3: seems like our social media feeds were saturated with everything
[26:24] S3: from they're going to take Australia Day, they're going to
[26:26] S3: take your land, they're going to burn the flag. Uh,
[26:29] S3: you know, they're going to change the national anthem, you know,
[26:32] S3: all of these things that were very emotive but had
[26:35] S3: nothing to do with the the issue at hand. Social
[26:38] S3: media was the perfect crucible to sink an idea like
[26:42] S3: the voice, because while you needed a lot of considered
[26:45] S3: and nuanced information in order to support it, all you
[26:49] S3: needed was a bit of noise to drown that out. Uh,
[26:52] S3: to convince people that this is all a bit confusing.
[26:55] S3: This is all too hard. I don't like this. I
[26:57] S3: don't like that it was not a level playing field.
[27:00] S3: You saw for the first time here what a lot
[27:02] S3: of people around the world in other countries had already experienced,
[27:05] S3: and that is manufactured social media hysteria to prevent policy reform.
[27:11] S2: Yes. It's extraordinary. And you're absolutely right about the bots.
[27:15] S2: They're actually like a disease now. They're right across Instagram
[27:20] S2: and Twitter. If you're aware of them, you actually tune
[27:23] S2: out of the subject. I don't have much regard for
[27:26] S2: Twitter anymore, and increasingly with Instagram, I'm not taking it.
[27:31] S2: Not that I ever took it seriously, but I'm I'm
[27:33] S2: just dismissing a lot of the material there. One of
[27:36] S2: the anger echo chambers is, of course, the manosphere, which
[27:40] S2: is actually more a swamp where, you know, um, a
[27:44] S2: group of angry men blaming women, uh, meet the kind
[27:48] S2: of consumerist, materialistic, dare I say, narcissistic culture that we
[27:54] S2: have now. What's what surprises me, though, is that that
[27:59] S2: what I call the kind of fake tough guys, Donald Trump,
[28:03] S2: you know, an obese guy in orange makeup who many
[28:07] S2: people perceive as a tough guy, you know, when he
[28:11] S2: suggests that he could have taken on the parkland mass killer.
[28:14] S2: I mean, you should be laughing at that, not listening
[28:17] S2: to it, that the nonsense that he speaks has been
[28:21] S2: so normalized that people barely bat an eyelid anymore. Then
[28:26] S2: we have Pete Hegseth talking like a teenage gamer in
[28:29] S2: his press briefings on the Iran war. We are punching
[28:34] S2: them while they're down. Which is exactly how it should be.
[28:38] S3: Well, look, some things haven't changed, right? So I was
[28:41] S3: once a teenage boy myself. I'm sure you. You too.
[28:44] S3: You were too, Greg. And we were full of fake bravado.
[28:49] S3: Fake male bravado, pretending to be stronger than we were,
[28:53] S3: pretending to be cooler than we were. These things are
[28:56] S3: very normal. This is part of, you know, how a
[28:58] S3: young man forms their identity and finds their place in
[29:01] S3: the world. The thing that's different is what that looked
[29:06] S3: like for me was, you know, me and my friends
[29:08] S3: might put on a Canberra Raiders jersey and pretend to
[29:11] S3: be Ricky Stuart and Laurie Daley, right? Or maybe get
[29:15] S3: one of those fake, you know, cigarette candies and pretend
[29:19] S3: to smoke, which was which we thought was very cool.
[29:21] S3: Back in the 1980s. Um, that hasn't changed. But what
[29:25] S3: has changed is now everything is on camera, everything is curated,
[29:31] S3: and that same teenage male impulse to have that fake
[29:35] S3: coolness and fake bravado, they can do that on platforms
[29:39] S3: that allow them to gain a lot of attention and
[29:42] S3: actually monetize that. They, their equivalent is saying, I've got
[29:48] S3: these looks maxing tips. Have you heard of that? Or
[29:51] S3: I'm a high value man. I can optimize my life.
[29:54] S3: And it comes from a place of insecurity, like all
[29:56] S3: teenage male bravado does. But now we inhabit a world
[30:03] S3: where that is rewarded, and they can broadcast that and
[30:07] S3: they can find a following and they can connect with others.
[30:09] S3: And the net result of that has been to rather
[30:13] S3: than learn through those, you know, development phases to be
[30:17] S3: rewarded for the worst impulses to be rewarded when they
[30:21] S3: have an abhorrent view about women, to be rewarded when
[30:25] S3: they say that success is this, this cold, lonely detachment, uh,
[30:30] S3: and this, uh, you know, a muscly physique, uh, and
[30:35] S3: and a sharp jawline. And they're able to compete at
[30:39] S3: those things. And the people that they look up to
[30:41] S3: are the ones who most embody that. And this has
[30:44] S3: had really, really bad consequences. We look at some of the,
[30:47] S3: some of the polling that shows that, uh, you know,
[30:51] S3: countries like Germany or the UK, the number of young
[30:55] S3: men who think that a woman's place is in the
[30:57] S3: home has grown by 400% in the last few years, uh, to, to,
[31:02] S3: to shocking levels of young men. So if people think
[31:06] S3: that these are fringe opinions now, the manosphere is mainstream
[31:10] S3: for young men globally, and we need to find ways
[31:13] S3: to actually reintegrate that normal social environment that comes from
[31:19] S3: face to face connection that they don't get when they're
[31:22] S3: cut off from that, when they're just surrounded by the
[31:24] S3: toxic bits, just surrounded by the, the masculinity, uh, you know,
[31:30] S3: that defines itself by, by wealth, wisdom and, and being jacked,
[31:36] S3: you know, there's nowhere, there's no information to tell them
[31:39] S3: that that's not how the world works and that we
[31:42] S3: shouldn't reward those things. And it's incredibly harmful for society.
[31:45] S2: Yes. Well, Andrew Tate from Andrew Tate to Clavicular, they're pretty, um, atrocious, um,
[31:52] S2: role models. Um, needless to say, China's um, seems to
[31:56] S2: be um doing something about it. It's now requires influencers
[32:02] S2: on serious subjects, health, medicine, law, education to hold verified degrees,
[32:08] S2: professional licenses, certifications. Here's the thing. They're actually qualified to
[32:13] S2: give advice. Um, we in the West as as you know,
[32:16] S2: our position in the world declines seem to be on this, um,
[32:21] S2: self-destructive mission. Why don't we do something like this?
[32:24] S3: Yeah. Look. And it's fascinating, right? I don't think we
[32:26] S3: need to necessarily adopt what what China does wholesale. There's
[32:31] S3: obviously caveats. We need to give around that. But what's
[32:33] S3: really interesting is, is them, uh, putting some architecture around
[32:37] S3: the idea that to be an expert, you should be
[32:40] S3: an expert. And of course, as anyone who spends five
[32:42] S3: minutes on social media now, uh, would would see, anyone
[32:46] S3: can be an expert. Um, no, I don't know if
[32:49] S3: you need necessarily the, the qualifications that the CCP thinks. Um, I,
[32:55] S3: I don't have a degree in computer science or communications,
[32:59] S3: you know, I've got a history degree in a law degree.
[33:01] S3: Does that qualify me to talk about social media? Well,
[33:04] S3: I live there every day. I think the, the important
[33:08] S3: thing is really on the audience side rather than the
[33:12] S3: influence aside. So, um, there are always going to be
[33:16] S3: people out there trying to sell their latest health tip
[33:20] S3: or wellness routine. But if we can provide people who
[33:24] S3: consume social media with an education about the dangers of that,
[33:28] S3: of how to ingest information safely and responsibly for them
[33:32] S3: to look, is this person an expert? They should be
[33:35] S3: doing that, as any informed individual should. When you read
[33:39] S3: legacy media as much as social media, is this biased,
[33:42] S3: is this trying to sell me something? Um, that kind
[33:46] S3: of critical consumption of social media is really where we
[33:49] S3: should be focused because of course, any attempts from governments
[33:53] S3: to regulate this often fall down because the the line
[33:57] S3: between censorship and regulation is often a very blurry one.
[34:01] S2: Indeed. Gosh, it's a it's a huge task. It's a
[34:04] S2: huge challenge. I'm, I'm not optimistic, to be honest, but, um,
[34:09] S2: we'll see how we go. It's taken decades, you know,
[34:12] S2: decades for civil rights, women's rights, rights for indigenous people,
[34:17] S2: LGBT rights. These have taken, as I say, decades to, um,
[34:22] S2: mature and to be accepted across the wider society. We've
[34:28] S2: created a society of reasonable tolerance and, and social equity.
[34:33] S2: All of this is now at risk by this, um,
[34:37] S2: kind of miasma of, um, of anger, conflict, misinformation, and
[34:46] S2: kind of obvious. Liz, you know, it's, um, it's deeply dispiriting.
[34:53] S3: Yeah. And unfortunately, we don't have decades. That's the difference.
[34:57] S3: You know, the history has been running at the same
[35:01] S3: speed for, for thousands of years. And the institutions we
[35:06] S3: set up around that in politics and media, are built
[35:11] S3: around something that that moves at a snail's pace. We
[35:15] S3: will see a new technology and regulate it. And where
[35:20] S3: there are harms and impacts that we'll see. You know,
[35:23] S3: there'll be a, a groundswell of, of political of public
[35:27] S3: support around, you know, a political solution. We don't have
[35:30] S3: the luxury. This is one of the reasons why social
[35:33] S3: media has become so harmful and so pervasive is that
[35:36] S3: it developed before it could be regulated. And the platforms,
[35:41] S3: you know, by, um, design as these viral advertising machines
[35:46] S3: became something accidental, which was our town square, our public square.
[35:51] S3: Now we regulate. You work in the media. It's a
[35:53] S3: heavily regulated environment because it is very important to our
[35:56] S3: town square. We never caught up with social media. We
[35:59] S3: never asked the same of them that we do of
[36:01] S3: legacy media because it happened so quickly. Now what's going
[36:05] S3: to happen with AI even more quickly? The scale and
[36:09] S3: pace of change is happening so quickly that it's going
[36:12] S3: to be very hard to to develop these technologies safely. Uh,
[36:17] S3: when our regulatory environment works at a snail's pace. So
[36:21] S3: this is the real challenge of these. What has in
[36:26] S3: the past, as you say, taken decades to advance the
[36:29] S3: rights of these really important causes? We don't have that time.
[36:32] S2: Yeah. We're now really at a fork in the road
[36:34] S2: with AI, aren't we? It's it's the big unknown. On
[36:37] S2: the plus side, AI through Google and keyboard searching, you
[36:41] S2: would hope would provide people with with accurate information. On
[36:46] S2: the other hand, it's basically a a harvester of information.
[36:50] S2: So with that, we'll probably be, uh, a lot of misinformation,
[36:55] S2: a lot of misleading information. So what do we do really?
[37:00] S2: I mean, we're up against it.
[37:02] S3: It's really hard. It's really hard. And, you know, AI is,
[37:06] S3: is a hard challenge for people to get their heads
[37:09] S3: around because it's so pervasive. It's going to change absolutely
[37:13] S3: everything about our lives as we know it, and it's
[37:15] S3: going to happen really quickly. And so, you know, some
[37:18] S3: of the early impacts are obvious. You know, there's a
[37:21] S3: there's a scale and volume of the amount of manufactured
[37:25] S3: fake content out there is, is clear for everyone to see.
[37:28] S3: But I think we need to not, you know, lose
[37:31] S3: sight of the forest for the trees there. It's not
[37:34] S3: just in the content that AI can create. It's the
[37:37] S3: world that AI creates around us. One where people that
[37:41] S3: are growing up now are not going to accept any
[37:44] S3: information they see. They will be increasingly cut off from
[37:47] S3: real human connection, and the ability of people to manipulate
[37:52] S3: them will increase exponentially. Because manipulation works. When you understand
[37:56] S3: someone really well and you know what to say to
[37:59] S3: them and how to say it to them, you can
[38:00] S3: outsource that now. So it is, look, there will be
[38:04] S3: amazing advances in society. There will be enormous benefits to AI,
[38:09] S3: but there may be enormous negative consequences unless we are
[38:12] S3: able to regulate it effectively and get ahead of it,
[38:15] S3: then we're going to experience the bad very quickly.
[38:18] S2: Your book is incredibly insightful. It's very well written. Um,
[38:22] S2: I went from cover to cover with it in a
[38:24] S2: matter of about a week and a half. Um, how
[38:27] S2: long did it take you to write, by the way?
[38:29] S2: Without AI, I might add. You talk about AI in
[38:31] S2: your preface.
[38:33] S3: I do, I say I have a preface saying, which
[38:35] S3: I something I think will be more common, which is
[38:37] S3: a statement saying no AI was used. But I also say,
[38:40] S3: I did wonder as I was writing it, will this
[38:43] S3: be the last book ever written by a human, you know,
[38:45] S3: and that's how the world feels around us. Um, it
[38:48] S3: was really hard to write because the landscape changes so quickly.
[38:54] S3: Rage bait became the the Oxford Dictionary word of the
[38:56] S3: year as I was, you know, in the process of
[38:58] S3: writing and editing it, Trump would open his mouth and
[39:01] S3: say something outrageous. I was writing a chapter about Charlie Kirk.
[39:05] S3: And then he got assassinated before I could finish it.
[39:08] S3: And I had to rewrite the whole thing. You know,
[39:10] S3: these events happen in real time in our social media
[39:13] S3: feed in front of us. And it was a challenge
[39:16] S3: to keep pace with them. But I felt so deeply
[39:19] S3: that what we lack in society at the moment, and
[39:23] S3: what my contribution to it could be, is to map
[39:26] S3: the way that this is a scary new power that
[39:29] S3: people have figured out how to game, people have figured
[39:32] S3: out how to manipulate, and people have figured out how
[39:34] S3: to monetize. And the more we can educate people about
[39:38] S3: how these systems of outrage work on social media, the
[39:41] S3: better equipped they are to navigate that ecosystem, to recognize
[39:45] S3: it when it's happening and not to fall for it.
[39:47] S3: So that's my goal for the book, is to help
[39:49] S3: spread that.
[39:50] S2: It's a good book for parents to read. Um, parents
[39:54] S2: of young kids and teenagers in particular who are coming
[39:58] S2: into the teenage years because forewarned is forearmed, as they say. Editor.
[40:05] S2: It's been a delight talking to you. Thank you so
[40:07] S2: much for your time today.
[40:09] S3: Thanks, Greg. And I believe we may be near the
[40:12] S3: 300th episode. I don't know, maybe we're the 299th or
[40:16] S3: 301st or something. So congratulations to you and the team.
[40:19] S3: It's been an absolute pleasure.
[40:20] S2: Thank you.
[40:23] S1: To enjoy more in depth journalism from the latest edition
[40:25] S1: of Good Weekend, visit us at theage.com.au or smh.com.au. This
[40:32] S1: episode was produced by Konrad Marshall and edited by Tim Mummery,
[40:36] S1: with technical assistance from Josh Towers and Lia Timson. Our
[40:40] S1: executive producer is Tammy Mills. Lisa Muxworthy and Tom McKendrick
[40:44] S1: oversee our podcasts, and Melissa Stevens is the editor of
[40:48] S1: Good Weekend. If you enjoyed this episode, follow our podcast
[40:52] S1: and leave us a review on Apple or Spotify. And
[40:55] S1: thanks for listening.

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