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The "Business" section of the January 4, 2025, edition of The New York Times had a long and detailed article that focused on "Rumble," commenting on the various news sources that Rumble makes available to its mostly "conservative" audience.
The article I am referencing was titled, "I Made Rumble My News Source. Here's What I Saw." If The Times' paywall will let you slip through, the article, by Stuart A. Thompson, is informative, and I recommend it. For those not familiar with Rumble, Wikipedia provides the following information:
Rumble is an online video platform, web hosting, and cloud services business, headquartered in Toronto, Ontario, with its U.S. headquarters in Longboat Key, Florida ... Rumble's cloud services business hosts Truth Social [Donald Trump's personal social media site] and the video platform is popular among American conservative and far-right users.
As outlined in The Times' article, Rumble features regular online programming from Tucker Carlson, Steve Bannon, Roseanne Barr, Charlie Kirk, and many other rightwing commentators, and this is where many people now get their "news." The most-watched, we are told, is "The Dan Bongino Show."
What struck me most in the article was a summarizing comment made by Candace Owens, who hosts the "The Candace Owens Show." Owens' picture is at the top of this blog posting. Wikipedia says that Owens is "an American political commentator and pundit, mostly described as conservative or far-right."
In the article, Owens tells The Times that she "realized I was waking up every day ... looking for things to be angry at, and that wasn't healthy for me." She says she is now trying to focus less on political outrage, and to be less negative.
Wouldn't that be great! In fact, though, "outrage sells." That is why online news sources are ever more polarized and polarizing. It's not just on Rumble. To capture the "eyeballs" that add up to advertising revenue, the most outrageous claims almost always win. Given that tens of millions of Americans are now getting virtually 100% of their information about the world from "outrage" news sites (there are some "progressive" ones, too), it is ever more difficult to make our politics work the way it is supposed to.
Is there a cure, something that might make things better? Well, the kind of outrage abstinence that Owens talks about might be a start. Stop listening to all that hysterical "news." That would help. In the end, though, I think real world exposure to real people - and especially people with whom you are likely to have disagreements - is likely going to be the only way. In person, it's a lot harder to be "angry" with someone than it is to be angry with a person portrayed online, villified and derided by online and social media sources.
Our president, you will remember, is fond to deriding and denigrating anyone whom he believes is not completely supportive of his positions and pronouncements. He is modeling the opposite of what we need to do. And again, let's disagree in person. "Find Some Friends," as I am fond of saying. "Real world" friends is what I have in mind, not "online" friends. And how about searching for a few "real world" friends with whom you don't completely agree, politically.
That can be a start.
Foundation of Freedom
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