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Comment by rsj_hn | Hacker News Reader

We are living in the age of moral indignation and outrage rather than intelligence and understanding. On the one hand, it does nothing to address the problem. On the other hand, that's good because it means there is more fuel for outrage in the next election, too.

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This “age of moral indignation and outrage” has been going on for eighty years at least—at what point do we stop calling it an “age”?

It definitely wasn't like this in the late 90's / early 2000's.

Apparently outrage died around that time, so it must not be like this now:

https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/The-Death-of-Outrage/...

It was. The late 90s and early 2000s were chock full of moral panic about video games in general and Grand Theft Auto specifically, with speeches about "murder simulators" training our youths to kill being quite common.

For example, Child's Play was founded as a response to that

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child%27s_Play_(charity)#Histo...

Jack Thompson was also making news at that time for filing lawsuits over the original Grand Theft Auto game.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Thompson_(activist)#Grand...

I seem to remember that the Child's Play founders had a particular rivalry or conflict with him over this.

The 90s were the peak of legislators trying to shift blame onto violent videogames and other media. Do you remember the uproar following the release of Mortal Kombat? Or the mini-satanic panic over magic cards?

Not to mention the big Satanic Panic over backmasking in music and Dungeons and Dragons and women working outside the house and leaving their kids in Satanic preschools and, before that, the panic over Rock'n'Roll music and, before that, the panic over Jazz and, before that, the panic over the Foxtrot...

Come to think of it, there seems to be a panic every time the culture changes.

I mean, in this case, people are panicking even when it stays the same! People are just panicky.

from about 2000 to 2015 we were relatively free of moral puritans trying to censor people, language, art.

but now it has returned with a vengeance and even worse than the moral panics of the 80s and 90s.

Nah.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4512156.stm

that's why I said relatively. and maybe it was more like 2005-2015.

Jack Thompson ran his crusade during that time. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Thompson_(activist)

Well, the age of enlightenment was well over a century and people seem to like moral indignation and outrage more, so I'd guess we're gonna stick with it for a while.

not so enlightened since they were still enslaving humans then

But their marketing was top notch

I love these predominantly white male notions of "We, the West, had it right at some point in time", no you didn't.

Wait which comment implied that

> at what point do we stop calling it an "age"?

Pessimistically? How long did the Bronze Age last?

"moral indignation" is timeless. But it does feel uniquely current to have two political parties that seem to use it as their primary currency (in the US at least). I have trouble recalling any major legislation after the Affordable Care Act that wasn't fully grounded in moral indignation or virtue signalling.

The Patriot Act wasn't passed in an atmosphere of moral indignation or virtue signalling?

US domestic politics since the early 19th century is cycles of moral indignance, largely evangelical and conservative in origin

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