Outrage Porn
Etymology
The columnist Tim Kreider used the phrase in a 2009 New York Times piece, applying the “-porn” suffix — already common in “food porn” — to manufactured indignation. It named a business model: harvesting attention by keeping audiences perpetually furious. The framing exposed outrage as a consumable product, not a spontaneous response.
noun phrase · /OWT-rayj porn/
Content engineered to provoke indignation for the pleasurable rush of being angry.
What it names
Media that sells anger as entertainment, treating fury the way pornography treats desire.
Example
The site runs on outrage porn — every headline is calibrated to make you angry enough to share it.
Related idea
Outrage porn is the content genre; ragebait is a specific post built to trigger it, and both exploit the attention economy’s reward for strong emotion.
See also