This morning I baked fascist muffins. Or racist muffins. Or classist muffins. Depends which corner of X you wander into. But the fact that someone, somewhere, will insist my Texas‑jumbo pumpkin‑spice muffins are an act of oppression is exactly why outrage fatigue is everywhere right now.
Back in my progressive days in Berkeley, I argued with Revolutionary Communist Party folks who thought burning flags was the path to revolution. It felt urgent, righteous. But eventually, the constant drumbeat of the next big outrage wore me down. Everything was a crisis. Everything demanded immediate fury. And after a while? I just wanted peace, a quiet coffee, and to not feel like the world was ending every damn day.
Fast-forward to now, January 2026, and that same exhaustion is everywhere. People are tapped out. Social media feeds are still flooded with rage—videos of ICE raids, chants against Trump, calls to abolish the agency—but a lot of us are scrolling past it, muting the notifications, or straight-up logging off. It’s not that we don’t care about immigration, families getting split up, or even the messy stuff like the Renee Nicole Good shooting in Minneapolis. It’s that the outrage machine never stops, and our batteries are dead.
Rage Harder!
Meanwhile, in the real world, the only chaos I’m interested in is the kind that involves cats and overturned cereal bowls. This isn’t new, but it’s hitting harder post-2024 election. Trump won on promises of tough borders and deportations. Voters—enough of them, anyway—said yes to that. They rejected the softer line pushed by Harris and the louder anti-ICE crowd. Yet here we are, with protests popping up in cities, social media ablaze with #AbolishICE, and zealots (you know, the super-vocal minority who live for the fight) acting like the election didn’t happen. And for a lot of regular folks? It’s just… tiring.
Outrage fatigue isn’t about being apathetic. It’s about survival. Your brain can only handle so much cortisol from doomscrolling before it says, “Enough.” Psych folks talk about how constant anger and disgust—amped up by algorithms that reward the most inflammatory posts—leads to cynicism, burnout, even hopelessness. You start tuning out not because you agree with the other side, but because staying mad 24/7 is unsustainable. One X post I saw nailed it: “Liberal outrage fatigue is real.” Another: “People are literally exhausted from all of this.”
Take the anti-ICE stuff right now. Protests are raging after that Minneapolis incident—people blocking streets, chanting about “fascism,” tying it to broader resistance against Trump. Groups like PSL and Refuse Fascism are out there organizing, same playbook as always. But public support? It’s mixed at best. Polls show most Americans still back deporting criminals and fraudsters, and even independents who helped swing the election are wary of overreach but not ready to abolish ICE. The loud voices online make it seem like everyone’s furious, but in places like Hopewell or my Oak Grove neighborhood in RVA—working-class spots tied to real jobs and real life—people are more like, “We voted for this. Can we just have some stability?”
That’s the disconnect. The zealots dominating social media aren’t moving the needle in a good direction—they’re pushing people away. Algorithms love outrage because it keeps you engaged (likes, shares, comments = more dopamine hits). A small group of highly passionate posters can flood the feed, making it feel like the whole country’s boiling. But most of us? We’re not in the streets. We’re at work, picking up kids, paying bills. When every post is “THIS is fascism!” or “They’re coming for your family next!”, it stops landing. It becomes noise.
Not Gone Well
Remember how the 2024 election played out? Immigration was huge. Trump hammered on border security, deportations, rule of law. Harris’s side leaned into human rights, family separations, systemic issues. Voters picked the former. Not because they’re heartless—plenty worry about kids and due process—but because the constant moral panic felt detached from everyday concerns like jobs, safety, and not having chaos at the border. Post-election, the outrage kept rolling, but it didn’t flip anything. If anything, it hardened lines. People who were on the fence said, “This is why I voted Trump—to stop the endless drama.” It’s the same pattern I wrote about in Existential Dystopia Is the New Normal — when everything is framed as a crisis, nothing lands anymore.
And honestly? I get why the shift happens. I lived it. In Berkeley, the RCP types and endless protests alienated the broader progressive crowd. Families just wanted normal life. Students wanted to study. The outrage became absurd—chasing “stranger outrages” with no clear endgame. Same thing nationally now. The push for less ICE enforcement? Voters said no. But the machine keeps churning, and fatigue sets in.
The dark side is that this exhaustion lets the fringes win by default. When moderates check out, the loudest voices fill the vacuum. Social media turns into an echo chamber of extremes, where nuance dies and everything’s existential. Studies show overperception of moral outrage online inflates how hostile we think groups are—making division worse. People retreat into tribes or just disengage entirely. That’s not progress; it’s paralysis.
Outrage Fatigue—What Are We Raging For?
So what now? If you’re feeling this fatigue (and from what I’m seeing on X and in real life, a lot are), it’s okay to step back without guilt. Protect your peace. Focus on local stuff—your neighborhood, schools, community—where you can actually make a difference without the national circus. Directed outrage works better than scattershot fury. Talk to people IRL instead of yelling into the void. And yeah, log off sometimes. Doomscrolling isn’t activism; it’s addiction.
The zealots might keep raging, but they’re not speaking for most of us. The 2024 vote showed that. People want solutions, not perpetual crisis. When the noise gets too loud, tuning out isn’t surrender—it’s self-preservation. And maybe, just maybe, it’s the start of getting back to sanity. In the end, outrage is a tool, not a lifestyle. Burnout helps no one except the ones who thrive on chaos. Here’s to quieter days, clearer heads, and actually fixing things instead of just being mad about them.