Back from a well-deserved vacation, Glenn Reynolds said this:

It's amazing, though, how much more relaxed I am when I'm not being exposed to the latest outrage on the Internet . . . .

Unfortunately, in blogging these outrages tend to be called "content." Sometimes, I worry that the cumulative effect might not be good for one's mental or physical health. But OTOH, if there were no "latest outrages," what would that do to the quality of life?

Not that I should worry about that. People being what they are (and, if you write about politics, this administration being what it is) there will always be plenty to be outraged about. There will never be a shortage of outrage. Pessimists don't have to worry about "peak outrage" or anything like that.

Knowing this helps provide perspective, and allows me to not feel obligated to write posts about each and every outrage to come along. What I still have trouble with, though, is what I'll call "competitive outrage," which in turn fuels what I'll call "the outrage cycle." An incident will happen (because incidents always do happen), and it gets picked up by one outraged person or another, and then, depending on how many people become outraged (and the degree of influence possessed by those who are outraged) the incident goes from being an underreported incident to the "latest outrage," Outrage Of The Day, or even Outrage Of The Week. If you're blogging, no matter how sane you might think you are, this creates pressure to say something about it. The pressure is compounded by the fact that there are some people (self-appointed outrage-meisters, if you will) who believe it is their job in life to tell other people that they should be outraged. It's one thing to be outraged about something, but if there's one thing I cannot stand, it is the feeling that I have to become outraged on someone else's say-so.

The problem for me is that I really, really detest that pressure, and after all of these years I find myself much less tolerant of it than I was when I started blogging, so I end up reacting not to whatever the original incident was, but to other people's outrage over it. My reaction often takes the form of not blogging about something, and instead getting really pissed off. I become, well, outraged -- over outrage. Outrage being the direction outward of anger, I worry that being outraged over outrage but remaining silent about it might constitute the direction inward of anger. Is there such a thing as inrage? I hope not.

Because if I were to be judged by busybodies in the outrage industry, it might appear that I don't get outraged enough. As if there's such a thing as being outraged enough!

Why, I couldn't possibly be outraged enough!

I should probably try harder.