Confronting Outrage: A Conversation on Media and Polarization

Show Transcript

Beckemeyer on Toxic Media

[00:00:00] Bob Gatty: Are you guys as fed up as I am with a constant outrage that seems to be prevalent in the media these days when it comes to the state of our nation? The conservative media like Breitbart and Fox News looks for every opportunity to link Democrats with outrageous left wing ideas that often are exaggerated in their consequence and intensity.

[00:00:20] Defund the police, open borders, the cancel culture, on and on. The progressive liberal media like MSNBC wastes no time in calling out the Republicans and Trump for their wacko right wing positions on such issues as the environment, drill, baby, drill. The January 6th insurrection, Trump's defeat, immigration, and more. All of this contributes to the toxic polarization that we all experience nearly every day. So that's what we'll be discussing today with our guest, David Beckmeyer, a tech veteran with over 25 years in the San Francisco Bay Area. He was a pivotal figure in the democratization of the internet as founding CTO of Earthlink.

[00:01:08] With a history of founding, leading, and investing in tech startups, he now dedicates time to science communication, hosting the Outrage Overload podcast. The show explores the pervasive impact of outrage in society and politics with leading experts. Hey David, welcome to the Lean to the Left podcast .

[00:01:29] David Beckemeyer: Bob, thanks for having me here so much. I'm really, it's my pleasure to be here. 

[00:01:35] Bob Gatty: I hope we're going to have fun. I think we will. Now, on your website, you say that every day we're bombarded with outrage porn, material used to evoke anger, disgust, or indignation online. In the news, political campaigns, gossip, friends venting their frustrations.

[00:01:54] It's exhausting. That's what you said. What do you mean by all of that? 

[00:02:00] David Beckemeyer: Yeah I like the outrage porn term. I didn't invent it, but I've expanded on what, on the meaning. I think it was first used by somebody at the New York Times. 

[00:02:07] Bob Gatty: Huh. 

[00:02:07] David Beckemeyer: And they were speaking mostly in the context of social media, but I like the term because it captures two things.

[00:02:13] On the outrage side, you have outrage as this metaphor or proxy for a bunch of emotions. Like anger and indignation and moral outrage and infuriation and being infuriated and all these things. And then on the other side, I like the porn part because we're addicted to it, right?

[00:02:31] We go seek this stuff out. So we experienced this in, many places in our life. People often think social media is what you're talking about, right? But it goes way beyond that. Obviously the TV news does this a lot. You mentioned, several of those instances.

[00:02:43] And then, but it also campaigns do this, right? This is how they raise money. They say, Hey, the world's going to end. Send us 5 dollars. 

[00:02:49] Bob Gatty: Yeah, Exactly. 

[00:02:50] David Beckemeyer: And then also our friends do this too, we get in our circle of friends, especially when we're in our like minded friends, and we all start doing that did you see what so and so did, and pretty soon that escalates, and it just keeps building up.

[00:03:02] So we do see this a lot, so that's why I like the term, and that's where it started, is that, we've been telling ourselves these narratives about how awful these people are, and then we really start to believe them all, and then, that's just a spiral that makes it hard to, really look at the world with a clear vision and how can we move forward?

[00:03:18] It doesn't really help you or I, if we had started off agreeing to just scream about it some more, like we already are on the same page. 

[00:03:25] Bob Gatty: All right. So what is outrage overload? What does that mean? 

[00:03:32] David Beckemeyer: Yeah so I decided on that term because Outrage by itself is not always a bad thing.

[00:03:38] And there's probably some things maybe we should be more outraged about. 

[00:03:41] Bob Gatty: Yeah. 

[00:03:41] David Beckemeyer: But because of the steady stream, we're just, we've got the dial turned up to 11 all the time, and it loses its effectiveness. True. 'cause it could be, it can be act an activation signal. It can have that role, but not with we're just constantly outraged at everything all the time and we're just stressed out because of that. I can't sleep, it's, we've got all this anxiety. So that's where the overload part comes in. It's funny that you got it right because a lot of people, for some reason, they think I, they think the website and everything is outrage overload or that's, what the show is, outrage overload .

[00:04:11] It's okay. Sure. I'll be the outrage overlord, but that's not what it is. It's outrage overload. . 

[00:04:15] Bob Gatty: You can have a T-shirt that says Outrage Overlord. . Exactly. with some kind of a cool image. That'd be cool. Why don't you do it? Okay. So how can progressives effectively cope with and counteract the outrage media that fuels toxic polarization?

[00:04:33] How can they do that? 

[00:04:35] David Beckemeyer: Yeah, it is a big challenge because it's everywhere. We don't wanna stay informed. And we sometimes, like I say, we seek out this these messages because one of the reasons is it helps enforce our moral choices, right? Like we can see how, if they keep telling us how bad the other side is, makes us feel better about the choice that we made.

[00:04:53] So we do like that stuff sometimes and some of it's probably okay in, in, in small doses. But I think that's the big problem is we get to this point where we're really reactionary to anything that happened and anything we see. And if we keep believing these narratives, when we do meet somebody with differing views, we're going to, apply a bunch of assumptions about them that probably aren't true.

[00:05:15] Some maybe are, they're probably not all true. And, it's really prevents us from learning about each other and understanding each other's perspective better. So I think one thing is to push back on your side. We have less control over the other side. It's easy to, we have a bit more authority if we're talking to our own side.

[00:05:32] So I think, calling out our own side sometime when they're doing this kind of thing and also just maybe seeking out your news sources or turning, alternative news or not news at all. Maybe just turn it off for a while. 

[00:05:43] Bob Gatty: Yeah. 

[00:05:43] David Beckemeyer: Some of that I, in the news is the challenge.

[00:05:45] Don't get me wrong. There's no magical place I can send you that's going to give you, the perfect answer to that. And, even some of these things that people recommend Watch news or read news from both sides, even that doesn't exactly do it because you know what I had a guest on this basic said, so you got a bad meal at your restaurant.

[00:06:01] They're going to offer you what? Another bad meal. Yeah, exactly, yeah. 

[00:06:05] Bob Gatty: I have, I agree with that because I honestly, I have tried, I really have tried watching Fox news because I want to see what they're saying. And the positions they're taking, and how to counteract what they're talking about.

[00:06:22] But I can't. I just can't. I can't make myself do it. So I am one of these people that's in kind of an echo chamber, because, I watch the channels that kind of You know, talk about things the way I see them and people on the other side do the same thing. So now we're, we're in conflict and we're not even talking to each other.

[00:06:48] David Beckemeyer: Yeah. Yeah. And we don't get exposed to these conversations that much because it's a lot easier. I think, COVID and lockdowns made this even easier, right? You can really stay in your bubble even easier. And I think we don't have the skills. We aren't used to doing these conversations. And I, some, my show is, has people from both the left and the right.

[00:07:06] And it, so some people are self selected to, they want to look at, they want to look into this kind of a thing a little bit, but self selected into listening to the podcast, but it's still hard, right? It's hard to have the, it takes energy to go have these dialogues. It takes energy to get involved.

[00:07:21] And like you say, even find them, like, where can you find, like a sane place, but I want to say there are a lot of those kind of organizations out there that are modeling this behavior, even if you don't maybe want to participate yet. You can at least maybe participate in just by being an observer, things like braver angels.

[00:07:35] Things like living room conversations I'm involved. I'm a moderator for organization called crossing party lines. And they hold these conversations where it's about, people able to present their views and just regular people from the street. So you're not necessarily talking like a professional, PR person or politician or something like that.

[00:07:53] Just as regular people in their views. And, these conversations, the reason we have a moderator is just to keep within the rules. It's not about rejecting, you can't have that idea or whatever. 

[00:08:03] Bob Gatty: Right. 

[00:08:04] David Beckemeyer: It's just about, you know, staying respectful and things like that. 

[00:08:07] And so those are good ways, but that's a big, that's a big commitment.

[00:08:09] So you do a two hour conversation on a zoom, 

[00:08:12] you don't necessarily have to say anything but you might want to, once you're in the middle of one of these conversations but but that's a good way to get a good sense of what, how real people look at things and think about things and maybe take away some of that, Oh, the people that think that aren't necessarily really terrible. Oh, they have kids and dogs and they're worried about a lot of the same things I'm worried about. Yeah. And that can really help temper some of that and maybe make it a little bit easier to not just sink into that. The world is coming to an end.

[00:08:39] I can just see it. 

[00:08:41] Bob Gatty: Yeah. The other night I was at a local pizza joint and this elderly guy sat, Behind me, at a table behind me, and he was wearing a Trump MAGA hat. And although he smiled and said hello to my wife I was pissed. Why was I pissed? I was pissed because his hat told me all I needed to know about, from my opinion, about his values.

[00:09:06] I felt like saying something to him. But then, I realized that I was wearing my t shirt promoting my book, Hijacked Nation, Donald Trump's Attack on America's Greatness. So I kept my mouth shut.

[00:09:21] I just think that was probably the wiser move. That's an example of what outrage media has done to us. It's split us apart regardless, is that true? 

[00:09:33] David Beckemeyer: For sure. I, yeah, I think it has played a role. I don't think it's single handedly done it, but it's definitely played a role.

[00:09:39] Sure. Yeah. And, like what you were talking about there, I think creates another situation too that was probably not the right time to have that conversation anyway. You don't really know that person. You don't know where they're coming from. 

[00:09:50] Bob Gatty: Exactly. Exactly. 

[00:09:51] David Beckemeyer: And so that may not be coming into it with good faith.

[00:09:53] And, so that's one thing about these sort of organized conversations. At least, everybody's there, at least, they know what the rules were and they're coming there in good faith.

[00:10:00] Bob Gatty: Yeah. 

[00:10:00] David Beckemeyer: But yeah, it can't be a challenge to just randomly have a conversation in the grocery store anymore.

[00:10:05] Bob Gatty: The other thing that I thought about As this was, playing out in my head was, Hey, this guy's a grandfather. I heard him talking about his grandkid. He's a grandfather. I'm a grandfather. Why am I pissed at him? So we're different politically. Who cares? We need to think through things like that.

[00:10:23] Don't you think? 

[00:10:25] David Beckemeyer: Yeah, I think You know it's, it, there is a challenge here because nobody's asking us to give up your values or things like that. You can still accept that person as a human being and still find their place. They came to is abhorrent in some ways. I'm really like, wow, I can't believe you got there and, there's still this small percentage of people that are probably too far on the extreme for either side to deal with. But that's still the exception. And I think that's a problem of the outrage media idea is that even if they are that exception, they're presented as though that's the norm.

[00:10:55] That's the, even people that are very well aligned with their party is actually rare. They might be more, tribally aligned, but when you talk issue to issue, often there's less alignment than people think that there is. And most people aren't like that.

[00:11:09] A large majority of people, they align with one side or the other, probably most of the time in terms of how their identity, what their identity is, but they're not necessarily really like just hardcore I'm going to support anything they do and that kind of thing. No one really wants to put that conversation on TV, right?

[00:11:25] No one wants to say, Here's these two people that like, are different, but they get along. And there's some of that modeling going on, but I think on a lot of the TV shows, the news shows, they want to have somebody that's very opinionated. And very sure in themselves and so so yeah to your question about do we need to do that?

[00:11:42] Yeah, I think you know I really sometimes I get accused of asking people to just milk toast and become a centrist and just look at the world This one way and I think all the people in this space and that's you know And I'm you know in that space as well now, and I've learned about a lot of what's going on in here.

[00:11:59] And for the most part, that's not what most people are saying. There are groups that sort of, yeah, that's their objective. They're trying to drive people to a middle because they think that's the answer. And they're doing that in good faith. But most of these kind of activities are You know Heidi and Guy Burgess have been active in this kind of world, just looking at these conflicts and how they resolve these and how they see this as like a major problem for the world that needs to, needs a lot of energy put into it.

[00:12:22] And they use this term that they call pragmatic empathy, which is the idea that I can be empathetic without giving up my position. And, you can Understand those viewpoints without adopting them, right? And understand where they're coming from even if you still don't adopt those viewpoints.

[00:12:39] And I think that's something we have to be aware of. Just letting the person have some space and exist is not necessarily a tacit agreement, right? 

[00:12:47] Bob Gatty: That's true. That's true. Alright, so I presume on your podcast, you've, which you've done now, you told me about two years you've been interviewing scientists, experts in social psychology, political science, bridge building.

[00:13:06] What's that taught you about how media manipulation and partisan rhetoric impacts our political climate? Yeah,

[00:13:12] David Beckemeyer: It's a vicious cycle in a lot of ways, right? Because the, as we talked about before, the incentives are. They need to, they want to raise money, so the incentives to raise money are, how do you raise money and, everyone, all these, everyone looks at that psychology and says this is the way you get people riled up that gets them act, they activate for that and they might dig into their wallet and give you their 10 dollars or whatever.

[00:13:33] And then that sort of spirals because that message gets out there and then you become more locked and more certain. There's this idea of, that certainty can be our enemy that, certainty kind of is what enables us to see the other side as immoral and take larger actions and things like that.

[00:13:48] And over, over time, what has really happened is this division has become more bitter and And then what we find with that is that because we start to believe these narratives, we believe that the other side is not just has bad ideas, but has bad motivations or they're evil people.

[00:14:05] And then this makes us more likely to be open to more dangerous things to be quite frank, right? And. And people would say I had a a researcher on who, who did some research that found that the degree to which people were willing to do anti democratic things was about the same between Republicans and Democrats.

[00:14:26] And that, she took a lot of flack for that, saying that can't be true. Because the Republicans have done different things. But, this was basically self - reported information and what this was about really was this idea that when we believe the other side is more willing to violate these norms.

[00:14:45] we then become more willing to violate the norms. And we're caught in that kind of a cycle where we see the other side as worse than they really are. Cause when you, there's a big perception gap, both left and right that both sides think the other side is the average person on the other side is more ready to violate these democratic norms than they really are by a large margin.

[00:15:06] And that's also about the same, by the way, as to how different, how wrong we are about that for people on both sides. Because of things like that's what this outrage media helps build. It builds these sort of false perceptions in our head. It builds these false narratives of how terrible and evil and scary the other side is.

[00:15:22] And that makes us more willing to be the terrible, evil, and scary ones. 

[00:15:28] Bob Gatty: Yeah, and it seems like to me that if you if you continue to focus solely on polarization, that's got to distract people from addressing systemic problems and dealing with the issues that they really care about.

[00:15:46] So what steps can we take to ensure that our advocacy remains focused on substantive change rather than getting caught up in the polarization debate? 

[00:15:59] David Beckemeyer: Yeah, you can use a polarization debate, almost like you can weaponize it, like you can weaponize almost anything. And you can also use it, like you're saying, as a distraction.

[00:16:09] And that's not to say that the toxic polarization isn't a real problem. So what you can simultaneously do is you can try to be mindful of when you're framing things in the worst possible light and when you're doing catastrophizing and things like that on these issues. Focus on you and your side and where you have more control.

[00:16:30] And, and try to keep in mind when you're framing things. When you're stepping over the bounds of check, check yourselves, check your bias, check your, am I, is this a realistic possibility or am I carrying this too far? We, if we look at a lot of the stuff in agenda 47 or in project 25, which is on a lot of people's minds right now, there are a lot of things in there.

[00:16:53] And I think you, but it's easy to fall into sort of a hyper Catastrophizing about it and saying, on day one, all this stuff's going to happen. There definitely are bad things. And I think a lot of people are working on countermeasures should some of that start to try to happen, you can still simultaneously try to be realistic about what pieces in there, how would this really play out, how could they do it and who would be involved and pick of the 800, 900 pages of the project 2025, you're probably going to have to pick, five and which ones are most important to you and still then try to put it in perspective of okay they say they want to do this, what would that really involve? And could they really do that?

[00:17:34] And then if there are, where are the backstops and where can I if you don't want that agenda to happen, assuming then where are the backstops that I can support? How can I help defend these backstops? And and try to be realistic about it and not fall into, a worst case scenario, catastrophizing mindset.

[00:17:49] Bob Gatty: Yeah. I have in addition to my podcast, my Lean to the Left podcast, I have a blog site called Lean to the Left also. And I have a couple of really good writers that I asked to put together a series of articles taking apart the key components, the issues, the key issues that Project 2025 deals with.

[00:18:15] And they did an absolutely outstanding job, so I'd like to put in a little plug right now for you guys to check it out. Go to leantotheleft. net and you'll find that series there. We've published eight pieces so far, and we have three or four more to go, and they'll be online over the next week to ten days, I would say.

[00:18:38] They're good pieces, they help put things into perspective, admittedly from a progressive standpoint. Keep that in mind, but check it out. All right. Is there anything else we need to talk about, David?

[00:18:52] David Beckemeyer: I think we covered a lot of the vectors that we talked about. 

[00:18:54] Bob Gatty: Actually, I want to talk about your podcast. I meant to do that before I put my plug in there. But when you mentioned Project 2025, I thought, okay, now's the time. So let's talk about your podcast. You said that you do it mostly twice a month or every other week, I guess you said.

[00:19:12] Every other week, yeah. Yeah. And occasionally an extra one in between. And your focus, just give us a little elevator pitch on your podcast. 

[00:19:25] David Beckemeyer: Yeah, the super short one is, we talk about the science of outrage and outrage in society and outrage in politics, and then ways to lower the temperature.

[00:19:33] Slightly longer, what I focus on a couple of areas one is news diet news literacy, science literacy, that we spend some time there. The other is this, I, this, what I first said, the science, talking to scientists about some, when I see new research come out that sort of is adjacent to this phenomenon.

[00:19:52] And then the other is I talked to these practitioners about the bridge building. And that can be anywhere from a community leader. There's a whole bunch of organizations doing this kind of work and sometimes it also overlaps with the scientists that are doing it as well. And so it's, that's the main areas that we explore.

[00:20:07] The audience is really, folks that are curious and interested in a balanced perspective on things. So I don't, it's a meta politics podcast, if you will. I don't really take positions on issues in general. We talk about how we talk about the issues and things like that. And some of the science of how can we sleep better at night while we still remain engaged, civically engaged.

[00:20:29] So I, I guess the civic engagement would be a real, is related to that news diet aspect that we talk about. 

[00:20:34] Bob Gatty: Okay. So once again, the name of the podcast is, 

[00:20:38] David Beckemeyer: name of the podcast is Outrage Overload 

[00:20:42] Bob Gatty: and people can find it. 

[00:20:44] David Beckemeyer: You can find it@outrageoverload.net. 

[00:20:48] Bob Gatty: Okay. And I presume it's on all the major, audio podcast channels, correct? 

[00:20:55] David Beckemeyer: You can go to the website or you can, yeah, it's on Apple and Spotify and all of those guys. And we also republish it to YouTube, even though it's an audio only podcast, but it is up there on YouTube as well. 

[00:21:05] Bob Gatty: Yeah. Okay. Yeah. I do the same thing with mine. All right.

[00:21:09] Thanks. It's been great talking to you David. And I wish you the best of luck with your show. Sounds like it's a great one. And the idea of it. I really like the idea of trying to find ways to lower the temperature on things and still maintain your own positions and point of view.

[00:21:32] David Beckemeyer: Yeah, exactly. 

[00:21:34] Bob Gatty: Okay. All right. Thanks so much for joining us today on the Lean to the Left podcast. I think I'll lean to the left. 

[00:21:42] David Beckemeyer: Thank you, Bob. I really appreciate it. 

[00:21:44] Yeah if you'll allow me to, I'm going to plug that we did a little short I did a special episode on Project 2025, which actually turned into Agenda 47, because Trump can't walk away from that, right? It's on his website. And it's and it was too much to do all the issues, but we ended up talking about three big ones some of the ones to infiltrate the administrative state with loyalists and some of the and some of the stuff about funding and how, trying to make the executive branch be able to, pick and choose what they fund.

[00:22:11] And then the other one was about the DOJ and, just in breaking that, that division, that wall between that it exists between DOJ. And I had a right leaning political scientist come on. So that might be interesting for your listeners, but just to hear his perspective on how realistic these things are, that they could happen or not happen, and how scared we should be and maybe temper some of that, again, from what a right leaning person believes, and he's educated, he's a political scientist, he's not just a random person, and he's not a Trumper, by the way but he is he's not in favor of Trump but he's also much more sanguine about, some of this than I am and I don't know if, I think that's a reasonable thing to think about.

[00:22:47] Maybe that would be an interesting contrast with what, what you're, what's on your website. Does it and it's a, like I said, we only really look at three things because it's just, they're all, it's so much in there, right? 

[00:22:56] Bob Gatty: It turns out that the three things you looked at, we didn't really cover that much.

[00:23:00] We covered a bunch of other stuff. So that's good. And you guys watching and listening, check it out check out . 

[00:23:06] David Beckemeyer: And that one's only up on YouTube, by the way, it's not, it's going to come out later in the year, but it's out as a pre release on YouTube. So you can find it at our Outrage Overload YouTube channel.

[00:23:15] Bob Gatty: Okay, great. All right. The other day I did an interview with a guy who has written a book set in the year 20, I don't know, 2060 or something. I can't remember the exact date, but far, several years, many years into the future about, Civil War 2. 0 that happened. He wrote it from the standpoint of the liberals taking over the government and doing away with the Constitution and the Stars and Stripes and coming up with new stuff.

[00:23:52] And Turning everything into a communist state. And so I asked him, why in the hell did you have the liberals being the bad guys, and not the conservatives, because it's the conservatives, in my opinion, that are trying to do that kind of stuff. And it turns out that He supports the conservative side, and I should have picked up on that a little bit sooner than I did.

[00:24:18] But anyway, it was good to have the conversation. And he also wrote a baseball book that it was about the death of baseball that had occurred. when that second Civil War happened. And then how baseball was brought back. That's interesting. Anyway, you guys, if you get a chance, that's going to be streaming soon, so watch for it.

[00:24:40] Okay, anything else?

[00:24:43] David Beckemeyer: No, it was really good. I'm really, it was interesting. I really want to I would love to have your audience reach out to me anytime. My contact info is there on the site. I love to hear from real people. So if you have questions or you think I've said crazy stuff that you just can't believe, then I'd love to hear about it.

[00:24:55] Bob Gatty: I think this guy's crazy and he does stuff that he can't believe, but I'm happy to have him on my show. Thank you, David. Really enjoyed talking to you, pal. 

[00:25:04] David Beckemeyer: Thanks, Bob. Appreciate it.