Shock, horror, outrage

In the old days in Britain, there were newspapers of the left, newspapers of the right, serious newspapers and downmarket tabloids. Tabloids of the left and right were there to entertain the masses, the broadsheets to inform the educated classes. Back in the 1970s with rampant inflation, non-stop strikes, the Three-Day Week, we were all affected by blackouts, rubbish piling up in the streets. There was much to be outraged about; a letter to the editor should do the trick. Letters to the editor of right-thinking broadsheets - typically came from crusty colonels in the Shires, such as the stereotyped 'Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells' Now, DoTW was outraged but literate, with a point to make and usually a witty barb somewhere along the way.

Middle-market tabloids Daily Mail and Daily Express would run letters with a moany tone starting "Why oh why do we always..." while the downmarket tabloids letters columns would typically be pithy observations or tips delivered in short, punchy paragraphs that probably came from no further away than the subs' desk. Letters that were violently abusive, boring, over-long or plain mad would end up on the spike at every newspaper's office - there's no space for bad letters.

But the internet changed all that. Everyone's voice can be heard. Anyone with an opinion can shout. And be heard - not by millions, but by dozens, hundreds, thousands. And because many authors seek to be popular with a given audience of like-minded people, they aim to give that audience what it wants. And outrage - along with humour - are what grabs people's attention. [Read this excellent Economist briefing about how the attention economy driven by the social media has distorted democracy.] Outrage is being used to manipulate voters; set up story that people are likely to feel outraged about and link it to a forthcoming election. Or referendum. Fake news of the outrage-generating type has been deployed in the UK, US, France and Germany.

Humour is tricky to get right; good comedians are always in short supply. Outrage is easier to manufacture. Take the photo, below. A sign outside a retro PRL-themed bar in Poznań, styled after a Czarny Punkt (Accident Black Spot) sign, commonly seen on Poland's roads.

On the real thing, the number on the left is the number killed, the number on the right, the number injured. Here, it gives the number satisfied/happy, and the number sober. At first sight, a rather amusing take on an (all-too) familiar road sign... but could it cause outrage? Outrage to those who've lost loved ones to drunk drivers? I'm minded here of this weekend's horrific accident in which a drunken driver in a BMW, driving his pals home after a boozy night, lost control of the car; it smashed into a barrier and burst into flames. Everyone got out and fled the scene, except the eighth passenger - locked in the boot - who burnt to death.

Making any kind of link between alcohol and driving is... outrageous? Or, in this case - humorous?

It took me a while, for my first reaction was to laugh. It did strike me as funny.

I consider myself eminently fortunate in that I never lived under communism. That would have caused me to have felt genuinely outraged on a daily basis, seeing my petty freedoms taken away, seeing my human potential wasted by a stupid, brutal system - outrageous. People living under Robert Mugabe's regime in Zimbabwe would be right to feel outraged. Or citizens of Maduro's Venezuela. But we, in our safe European homes, with only limited emotional energy, comfortable and relatively (in historic and global terms) prosperous, have little to be outraged about in our day-to-day lives. In mine? Neighbours heating their houses by burning crap that poisons our air, drivers tearing down local roads far too quickly, aggressive dogs and people dumping household rubbish by the wayside.

These things affect me directly, on a personal, emotional level. But if someone were to say: "vote to leave the EU and these four things would be put right," I'd laugh at them. Some things are more fundamental than others. The most fundamental is the road from the bestial towards the angelic, from barbarism towards ever-higher civilisation, from aggression to kindness. We would all do well to address our feelings of outrage we come to feel when engaging with the social media.

This time two years ago:
My mother's funeral

This time three years ago:
Poland Works! revisited

This time five years ago:
Kraków-Warsaw by train

This time seven years ago:
Warsaw Blogmeet

This time eight years ago:
My fixie reconfigured

This time ten years ago:
Not In My Back Yard