Most modern outrage is performative

A few months back, I led this workout in the Ridglea North section of Fort Worth, and we ran around this field (Berney Park) doing station work. At one station, we tried to do a 4-minute plank hold. Some people in humanity can do this, but not many. I can do maybe 15 seconds before I give out or go to a high-plank. Some guys can do a minute, maybe two. Four is rare. Holding onto something like that for four minutes is brutal. I joked at the time (during the workout) that if you can do it, you’ll have a better Instagram; the joke, if you don’t get it, is that you’d have nice abs.

I think about that sometimes whenever the new “thing of the moment” shows up culturally. Right now it’s Will Smith slapping Chris Rock at the Oscars. Everyone feels they must have a take, and it’s important to them to voice it (tribalism, belonging), and I’m no different. But the problem with a lot of modern outrage is that it’s simply performative. There’s no real action item or future steps, except to post about something, say how awful it is, mini-rant about it, and then go back to your life. We see this literally all the time with corporate diversity stuff. Some paper comes out about how 97% of Boards are lily-white, everyone goes nuts for a few days online, and then we get back on a carnival ride of nothingness.