At the height of the Lebanese debate over Hezbollah’s weapons, a new face suddenly appeared on the screens: Al-Manar TV correspondent Ali el-Reda Berro. In a short clip, he wandered through phones with smugness, turning political debate into a contest of bullying. He mocked May Chidiac, with a degrading description tied to her disability after her assassination attempt, sneering: “You’re chopped up, wired up, plastic.” Then he turned to Paula Yacoubian, calling her “naturalized” in a derogatory way aimed at her Armenian origin.
What makes a young man who knows the ins and outs of digital platforms capable of turning insult, hatred, and racism into capital—of turning a slur into “reach” and views? It’s not just a personal moral slip; it’s a textbook lesson in a machine that rewards the most extreme outbursts and markets them. The harsher the tone, the bigger the digital return. This is exactly where the discussion of the “Economy of Screaming and Rage” begins.
We’ve reached a point where we’ll do anything just to be watched.
What changed in our relationship with ourselves and others for us to sink to this level? The story is not merely about individual moral decline, though that exists; it’s about an entire structure redistributing rewards. Praise is now immediate, collective, and quantifiable. Applause or likes can be measured, and thus, become addictive. Anyone who experiences a taste of viral fame through a moment of anger or filmed humiliation quickly learns to repeat it, louder, harsher, more charged.
We behave like a singer who, upon hearing the first cheer, raises their voice further. But here, the stage has no ceiling, and the microphone rests in everyone’s pocket.
In this new stage, “opinion” becomes performance; a surge of emotions.
Those who want status online learn that the quickest path runs through the most provocative feelings: shock, fear, rage, incitement, insult, hysterical laughter, or weeping. That is why political discourse on platforms often seems always on the brink of screaming: because screaming is the fastest way to the screens. This is no coincidence; it’s the product of both technology and society: a digital design that eases posting and rewards engagement, and an audience that gathers around whatever shakes them most. When these two conditions meet, what we can call an “Economy of Rage” is born. Every loud outburst buys its producer more visibility, every new reach trains them to produce a fiercer outburst, and the higher the price of virtual fame, the greater the temptation to turn cruelty and vulgarity into spectacle.
The harsher the tone, the bigger the digital return. This is exactly where the discussion of the “Economy of Screaming and Rage” begins.
This economy also feeds on something subtler: a sense of being freed from social cost behind the screen. Words we hesitate to say face-to-face slip easily from our keyboards. Barriers shrink, the ego inflates. We seek status by attacking others, cleansing our conscience with the labels of “truth,” “exposure,” or “just joking.” Over time, a kind of boasting emerges. The measure is no longer the accuracy of an idea or its actual impact, but the sharpness of the tone and its ability to grab attention. We fight with declarations more than we converse with ideas.
This culminates in something darker: performative violence. In wars and conflicts, humans mourn their dead with rituals and words. But the era of cameras added a new ritual: staging the scene for the distant viewer. The lens enters the heart of the event, not only to document but to create an aura around the actor.
During massacres, seen repeatedly in recent years, and again recently in Syria, we suddenly see a fighter holding a weapon in one hand and a phone in the other. It is not enough to kill; he must appear killing, and we must witness it. Here suspicion peaks: violence is no longer a byproduct of documentation—documentation itself becomes a goal of violence. The killer addresses us as he kills, humiliates, and desecrates the body of his victim.
This logic extends to homes and public squares alike. Parents who turn their children into content excuse themselves as doing it for laughs; commentators excuse themselves as truth-tellers; armed men excuse themselves as fighting for a cause. But the essence is the same: a performance seeking reward. Once we taste the thrill of appearing, the other—be they child, opponent, or victim—becomes nothing more than raw material to feed the show.
This is the greatest moral loss: that dignity itself becomes raw material for attention.
Platforms have reordered the world according to “most engaging.” The more you stir the crowd, the higher your post climbs. This is not deliberate evil so much as economic engineering. Companies sell our attention, so they look for what keeps us glued longest to the screen. The outcome is unintended but predictable: a constant bias toward extremes, where mockery is harsher, hostility stronger, violence more shareable.
In the end, not everything is reducible to social media, but platforms have become the place where reputations are made and tested, and where our daily ethics are measured. When a father laughs at his daughter’s fear, or an influencer profits from insulting rivals, or a killer films the terror and death of his victim, they share one thing: a certainty that an audience is waiting, and that the algorithm will open the way.
Reclaiming ethical meaning in public life begins with breaking that certainty: cultivating a taste that does not reward harm no matter how exciting it is, and demanding platforms that don’t turn extreme outbursts into the measure of truth. Only then can the image return to its rightful place: as a window onto the world, not a stage for spectacles that consume the world.
