I have a hypothesis about what might contribute to *moral outrage* being such a big thing on social media. Imagine I’m sitting in a room of 30 people & I make a dramatic statement about how outraged I am about X. And say 5 people cheer in response (analogous to liking or RT). But

suppose the other 25 ppl kind of stare at the table, or give me a weird look or roll their eyes, or in some other way (relatively) passively express that they think I’m kind of over-doing it or maybe not being as nuanced or charitable or whatever as I should be. IRL we get this

kind of ‘passive negative’ feedback when we act morally outraged about certain things, at least sometimes. Now, a few people in the room might clear their throat and actively say, “Hey, maybe it’s more complicated than that” and on Twitter there is a mechanism for that: comments