Outrage Feels Good

How the Bud Light boycotts highlight an unspoken emotional reality

When the country’s number one beer brand advertised with a transgender tik-tok personality last April, the culture wars opened on a new front. The ensuing boycott by the political and cultural right slashed sales of the beer, demoting the top selling beer brand to fourth place and tanking parent company AB In-Bev’s stock price. Other brands, including the retail store Target, were caught in the crossfire, and scaled back their attempts at more inclusive advertising. A columnist for The Atlantic dubbed the backlash “the most successful American-consumer boycotts in a quarter century.”

While most angles of the story have been covered already -- the economic consequences, the social impacts on the LGBTQ community, and the unexpected political clout of the right -- I’d like for us to consider these matters from another angle.The Bud Light boycott is the perfect example to highlight an unspoken truth that shapes our political and public discourse: it feels good to be outraged.

Nobody says this out loud these days, but it needs to be said: outrage feels good.

Sure, the injustices that lead to outrage are painful, but outrage itself puts a pleasurable patina on a sad situation. It traffics in what humans long for: justice, community, moral clarity, and validation. It provides a common connection with others who share in that outrage, whether that takes place across bar stools or bridge games or Facebook likes. Moral and political crusades that begin in outrage make compelling stories that are retold for years. As a friend recently quipped, “the only thing more satisfying these days than being right is feeling wronged!”

It’s little wonder, then, that a D-list celebrity goes viral on social media by swearing and shooting up consumer goods with a semi-automatic rifle. Or, from the opposite perspective, it’s little wonder that an environmentalist would super glue themselves to a Monet painting and post about it on Instagram. It doesn’t just accomplish a political goal, but it feels good at the same time, regardless if one is on the left or the right.

Despite its potency, outrage is a baser pleasure, worth rejecting for higher thoughts and feelings. Here are three reasons why your life and everyone else's life would be better with a little less outrage:

First, the community that is formed through mutually shared outrage is a mirage. It feels good to have a moral claim validated by others, but ultimately, a community of outrage is external and negative. By external, I mean that a relationship between two people is dependent on a third object. By negative, I mean that a relationship formed in mutual outrage finds commonality in what is rejected, not what is affirmed. Externally focused and negatively aligned communities are fragile, and can’t provide the benefits that a true community gives its members.

Second, outrage is a “lizard brain” emotion. The “lizard brain” is a nickname for the brain’s limbic system, which houses the body’s automatic and base urges, such as fear, hunger, the fight/flight reflex, and sexual desire. It’s called the “lizard brain” because the limbic system is the maximum amount of brain development in an actual lizard. We need all our brains to innovate toward a better society that flourishes for homo sapiens, not just the baser parts. Outrage feels good, but it isn’t going to resolve the climate crisis, realign immigration policy, or fix the American healthcare system.

Finally, outrage is a temporary pleasure. Once justice has addressed a particular moral transgression, outrage fades, along with all its benefits. For those who have come to rely on the pleasures of outrage for connection and meaning, the incentive to seek out that next hit is strong. The regularly outraged person becomes dependent on it as the only way to stave off loneliness and meaninglessness.

How, then, do we free ourselves from the trappings of this baser pleasure? The people I know who are the least outraged are usually the ones whose lives are defined by higher pleasures. They are part of a supportive and happy community and they have deep and loving relationships. Their basic needs are met, so they focus on taking care of others instead of focusing on self-improvement. Everything that outrage provides, they already have.

Figure out what outrage gives you, and find it somewhere else. You and the world around you will be better off for it.