A review by ellagrant26
Outraged: Why Everyone Is Shouting and No One Is Talking, by Ashley 'Dotty' Charles
3.0
An interesting and topical book on why getting into arguments on Twitter over every bad opinion out there isn't all that productive in effecting change. I think we can all get addicted and in turn exhausted by drama on Twitter, revelling in a well crafted and witty call out of an obviously bad person and feeding the monster that is Twitter, who undoubtedly don't care what's being argued about on their platform but that everyone is tweeting about it. Outraged is a book for people who are sick of arguments online and want to find a way to translate this energy to direct action. How focusing on the mistakes of one person can take attention away from larger issues that are being swept under the rug.
I do feel like I've heard the same point in youtube video essays on cancel culture, some I think did a better job on the topic. It's a small book that I don't think dives as deep as I wanted into the topic even if I liked the points she brought up. In fact, for such a small book it felt very padded out by the two big interviews she did with Rachel Dolezal and Katie Hopkins. I enjoyed her talk with Stephanie Yeboah a lot more and felt that conversation brought a lot more productive thoughts to the table. The jokes were very hit and miss for me and felt clunky to read. The most useful takeaway from this is her conversation with stop funding hate, a group that pressure big companies to pull their ads from news outlets that promote hate. It showed a very useful way that online outrage can be harnessed to achieve real outcomes and financially impact those who profit from hate.
Overall, an interesting read on a topic I like reading about but left me wanting more analysis and not just the author's YouTube rabbit hole.
Thanks to Bloomsbury for giving me a free copy in exchange for an honest review.
I do feel like I've heard the same point in youtube video essays on cancel culture, some I think did a better job on the topic. It's a small book that I don't think dives as deep as I wanted into the topic even if I liked the points she brought up. In fact, for such a small book it felt very padded out by the two big interviews she did with Rachel Dolezal and Katie Hopkins. I enjoyed her talk with Stephanie Yeboah a lot more and felt that conversation brought a lot more productive thoughts to the table. The jokes were very hit and miss for me and felt clunky to read. The most useful takeaway from this is her conversation with stop funding hate, a group that pressure big companies to pull their ads from news outlets that promote hate. It showed a very useful way that online outrage can be harnessed to achieve real outcomes and financially impact those who profit from hate.
Overall, an interesting read on a topic I like reading about but left me wanting more analysis and not just the author's YouTube rabbit hole.
Thanks to Bloomsbury for giving me a free copy in exchange for an honest review.