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May 2025
1h 27m

The Economy of Outrage

Julia Hava & Eliza McLamb
About this episode

This week, the girlies tackle rage bait: the content that’s engineered to make you mad and keep you scrolling. From gutting historic homes to incendiary Republican rhetoric, they explore how anger became a content strategy and why we keep falling for it. They trace the long history of provocation, once a way to challenge power and now just another feature of your FYP, breaking down how rage bait works, who benefits from it, and why nothing feels shocking anymore. Digressions include the beauty of riding a train, knowing conservative content creators in real life, and the age-old question: does being a woman count as rage bait?

We’re going on tour!!!! Find tickets at https://linktr.ee/binchtopia

This episode was produced by Julia Hava and Eliza McLamb and edited by Allison Hagan. Research assistance from Kylie Finnigan.

To support the podcast on Patreon and access 50+ bonus episodes, mediasodes, zoom hangouts and more, visit patreon.com/binchtopia and become a patron today.

SOURCES

$5.2m for a duct-taped banana: has the buyer of Maurizio Cattelan’s artwork slipped up?

10 Works of Art That Made People Really Mad 

100 years later Duchamp’s ‘Fountain’ still influential

Against Empathy by Paul Bloom

Anger is an approach-related affect: Evidence and implications. 

Antisocial Behavior in Online Discussion Communities

Ape and Human Cognition: What's the Difference?

Chris Ofili: Can art still shock us?

Chris Ofili, The Holy Virgin Mary 

Emotion Shapes the Diffusion of Moral Content

Facebook Manipulated User News Feeds To Create Emotional Responses 

How A Urinal Changed Art History: The Duchamp Fountain

How Upton Sinclair’s ‘The Jungle’ Led to US Food Safety Reforms

How (and where) does moral judgment work?

How the Shock Jock Became the Outrage Jock

Marcel Duchamp: The Forefather of Conceptual Art

More Transparency and Less Spin

Movement, Affect, Sensation

Musk’s Political Posts

Online hate speech victimization: consequences for victims’ feelings of insecurity

Piss Christ by Andres Serrano 

Social Influence Bias: A Randomized Experiment

Still Amusing Ourselves

The Art of Absurdity: Resurgence of Dadaism through Gen-Z memes.

The Attention Merchants: The Epic Scramble to Get Inside Our Heads

The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind By Gustave Le Bon  

The Cultural Politics of Emotion by Sara Ahmed

The Dada Era of Internet Memes

The Disinformation Dozen

The Emotional Dog and Its Rational Tail: A Social Intuitionist Approach to Moral Judgment 

“The Great Moon Hoax” is published in the “New York Sun”

The Shock Of The New: Art And The Century Of Change 

The urinal that changed how we think

These Influencers Are Making Content to Make You Angry — And It’s Working 

Understanding Media - The Extensions of Man 

Walter Lippmann and Public Opinion

What is rage-baiting and why is it profitable? 

Yellow Journalism 

YouTube, the Great Radicalizer

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