Okay. You got me again, mainstream media. Social media, you got me again too. Y’all trolled the crap out of me.
For years, I bought into more of the racial and political outrage machine than I care to admit also.
A lot of the racially charged events blasted across mainstream media are supposedly presented to “move the conversation forward”—whatever the hell that means. That’s one of those phrases political pundits love because it sounds profound without requiring anybody to explain where exactly this damn conversation is moving.
Forward to what? Another panel discussion?
Another election?
Another four years of Black people being told democracy itself depends on us showing up and voting Democrat one ’mo ’gin?
I’ve become increasingly skeptical of the whole production.
Liberal media doesn’t repeatedly highlight racial controversy simply because executives somewhere suddenly developed an overwhelming concern for the well-being of Black America. Yes, legitimate racism exists. Yes, racial injustice deserves coverage. Yes, police brutality, discrimination, inequality, and institutional bias are real issues.
But there is a difference between informing people about injustice and packaging injustice as an emotional product.
Too often, liberal media coverage seems drenched in this condescending “poor old Black people” tone—as though Black Americans are permanent charity cases waiting for enlightened political saviors to rescue us.
Then comes the outrage.
Then comes the panel.
Then comes the solemn lecture.
Then, conveniently enough, comes election season.
And conservative media plays its own role in the circus.
Its racial coverage often appears designed to appeal to an audience already suspicious of Black people. The story underneath the story becomes: See? Those people are dangerous. Those people are criminals. Those people are complaining again. Those people probably deserved whatever happened.
Same circus. Different tent.
One side performs racial sympathy. The other performs racial resentment.
Then both sides point at each other and yell, “Look how terrible those people are!”
Meanwhile, the rest of us are down in the comment section fighting like somebody promised the winner free groceries.
My conjecture—and I emphasize conjecture—is that much of this ecosystem benefits powerful political, corporate, and media interests because division keeps people emotionally occupied. Whether every ugly comment is organic, algorithmically amplified, coordinated, bot-generated, or simply posted by somebody who desperately needs a hobby is another question.
But we already know rage travels.
Social-media platforms reward engagement, and anger generates engagement like gasoline meeting a match.
All it takes is a few inflammatory posts, clips, comments, or headlines to establish the emotional temperature. After that, real human beings take over.
And some people online behave like they came pre-installed with NPC dialogue.
No independent thought.
No nuance.
Just:
“LIBERAL!”
“MAGAT!”
“RACIST!”
“COMMUNIST!”
“WOKE!”
“FASCIST!”
Repeat until civilization collapses.
People increasingly talk about politics like rival football teams—except even Cowboys and Eagles fans occasionally remember they’re human beings.
That’s one of the biggest changes I’ve noticed.
Look at political discussions from the 1980s, 1990s, and early 2000s.
And yes, Gen Xers and millennials, I just referred to the 1990s as part of the late 1900s.
Go ahead and stretch your back before continuing.
Political arguments could certainly get ugly back then. America has never exactly been a monastery of calm intellectual disagreement.
But compare much of the public-media tone of those eras with the 2010s and 2020s.
Man, listen.
The modern political-media environment increasingly resembles professional wrestling performed by people holding political-science degrees.
Everybody needs a villain.
Everybody needs a clapback.
Everybody needs a viral moment.
Everybody needs to DESTROY somebody.
“Pundit DESTROYS liberal!”
“Professor HUMILIATES conservative!”
“Activist SHUTS DOWN racist!”
“Republican OWNS Democrat!”
Apparently the republic cannot survive unless everybody is getting owned, destroyed, humiliated, exposed, slammed, crushed, or annihilated before lunch.
And eventually that communication style leaks into ordinary people.
That’s how influence works.
You can become conditioned without realizing you’re being conditioned.
You absorb the language.
You absorb the hostility.
You absorb the assumptions.
Then one day you look back and realize you don’t even sound like yourself anymore.
That realization hit me when I went back and read some articles I wrote during the late 2010s.
My first reaction was:
Damn. I also sound mad as hell.
Now, was some of the anger justified?
Absolutely.
There is plenty happening in America worthy of righteous anger.
But righteous anger and manipulated outrage are not necessarily the same thing.
That distinction matters.
I began noticing it outside political media too.
I recently watched a YouTube video where a creator asked why comedy movies don’t seem as funny or culturally dominant as many of the comedies from the 1980s, 1990s, 2000s, and early 2010s.
His argument was that American culture became increasingly politicized, particularly through the Obama years, repeated national controversies surrounding police brutality, the Black Lives Matter movement, the rise of Donald Trump, and the endless political battles that followed.
What struck me was that this wasn’t even supposed to be a political video.
It was about movies.
Yet politics had become impossible to avoid.
Then I saw a comedian on Facebook talking about how voting used to be something many people simply did without turning it into their entire personality.
You voted.
You went home.
You ate dinner.
Life continued.
Today?
Parents stop speaking to children.
Brothers and sisters fall out.
Longtime friendships collapse.
People who once borrowed each other’s lawnmowers now look at one another like mortal enemies because one voted for Red Political Daddy and the other voted for Blue Political Mommy.
And both parties somehow manage to keep serving wealthy donors while ordinary Americans fight over which one loves them more.
That was when it really clicked for me.
I had been hoodwinked.
Bamboozled.
Led astray.
And apparently enrolled in an emotional subscription service I don’t remember signing up for.
So I canceled.
Not my political awareness.
Not my concern about racism.
Not my willingness to criticize injustice.
I canceled my subscription to manufactured emotional chaos.
Because if somebody can control what makes you angry every day, they possess a disturbing amount of influence over your attention.
And attention is currency.
That realization is also changing the way I write.
From now on, 3D North Star will still have teeth.
Oh, absolutely.
Some people are still getting bitten.
But every article doesn’t need to sound like I wrote it immediately after somebody slapped my grandmother.
The new approach is playfully hostile.
Passing mockery.
Sharp-tongued sarcasm.
Cynicism where cynicism is deserved.
Occasional condescending dismissiveness toward ideas so ridiculous they don’t deserve twenty paragraphs of dignified rebuttal.
Think political commentary with enough consciousness to realize neither major party deserves worship.
I can mock conservatives.
I can mock liberals.
I can mock racists.
I can mock performative anti-racists.
I can mock Black folks who enthusiastically volunteer to carry water for people who wouldn’t give them a cup.
And I can mock well-meaning morons of every race who remain proudly committed to being tone-deaf and stuck on stupid.
Equal-opportunity foolishness deserves equal-opportunity ridicule.
The difference is that I no longer want outrage controlling the pen.
There is power in being able to observe madness without emotionally moving into the asylum.
That doesn’t mean becoming passive.
It means becoming harder to manipulate.
Because maybe one of the biggest acts of rebellion in modern America is refusing to let some television network, politician, influencer, billionaire, algorithm, or anonymous account decide what emotional state you’re going to live in today.
Black people have legitimate issues to confront.
Working-class Americans have legitimate issues to confront.
Racism deserves serious discussion.
Economic inequality deserves serious discussion.
Political corruption deserves serious discussion.
But maybe we should start asking ourselves one additional question whenever the national outrage machine suddenly tells us what we’re all supposed to be furious about:
Who benefits from having us mad at each other today?
Because while we’re arguing about whose political mommy and daddy are better, somebody somewhere is counting money.
And I suspect they find the whole show very entertaining.