The internet hasn’t yet destroyed books wholesale, but it has brought some genres close to extinction. Google Translate has generally superseded language dictionaries; a student is more likely to turn to ChatGPT than a textbook; Mills and Boon can’t compete with the internet’s infinite erotica. There is, then, a particular irony in the fact that Ed Coper’s new book Angertainment straddles the archaic genres of political pamphlet and humorous non-fiction as it examines the distraction and rage that drive social media. Coper, a political communications
expert best known for his work with GetUp and the Climate 200 “teal” independents, begins his book with a brief jaunt through the history of angry crowds. From the 1999 Seattle WTO Protests to the Paris Commune, he concisely and engagingly shows how mass rage can incite both progress and destruction. Now, with the advent of social media, algorithms skew content to new extremes: “The more engaging, the more powerful. The more contrarian, the more visible. The more outrageous, the more persuasive”. Thus, Andrew Tate
tells boys that feminism is the root of all evil; thus, X profiles confect outrage at transgender influencers; thus, Fox News hosts warn that wind turbines kill whales. Thus, angertainment – a portmanteau standing for all the distraction and provocation and lies of online discourse, at least from the view of a bien-pensant progressive. The unwieldy nature of this argument becomes clear when it is applied to contemporary examples such as the 2023 Australian Indigenous Voice referendum. At the start of Labor’s term, polls showed
widespread support for constitutionally enshrining a representative body for Indigenous Australians; by the time of the vote, more than 60 per cent of Australian voters rejected it.
Ed Coper, Angertainment, social media algorithms, rage, engagement, political pamphlet, humorous non-fiction, Andrew Tate, X, Fox News, wind turbines kill whales, Australian Indigenous Voice referendum, Labor, GetUp, Climate 200 teal independents, Seattle WTO Protests, Paris Commune