Outrage for Sale
How Algorithms Disciple Our Hearts (and How To Resist)
Last week reminded me how the internet can turn real human pain into instant content. Within minutes of a public tragedy, graphic videos of a man’s murder raced across platforms faster than facts, faster than prayers, faster than silence. It felt like the feeds and algorithms were wired for the worst. Turns out, that just might be the case.
What do I mean by “the algorithm”?
I’m not naming a secret super villain, (though I think even the Avengers would have a tough time against him!) I’m describing the ranking systems that decide what you see next in your feed. Every tap, pause, comment, and share becomes a signal. The system uses those signals to predict which post will keep you on the app a little longer, then stacks your feed accordingly.
It does not ask, “Is this true?” or “Is this good for your soul?” It asks, “Will this hold your attention?” That goal creates a feedback loop: what you attend to today trains tomorrow’s feed, and tomorrow’s feed trains your attention. Simply knowing this loop exists is an inoculation of sorts, because once you see it, you can begin to resist it, to starve what inflames, feed what is noble, and add a little holy friction before you share. But before we get to that, lets talk about what these algorithms are doing.
What the algorithm actually optimizes for
Despite the mystical aura, a “feed” is mostly math that learns what keeps you on the app. In randomized experiments during the 2020 U.S. election, switching Facebook/Instagram users from algorithmic to chronological feeds significantly reduced time on the platforms and changed what people saw, i.e., evidence that ranking systems shape exposure and engagement even when short-term political attitudes barely move. link link link
Why outrage wins (and pays)
High-arousal emotions spread. False or highly novel stories travel farther, faster, deeper than true ones; posts targeting the “other side” punch above their weight; and platforms have (at times) weighted “angry” reactions far above likes, boosting incendiary content.
Outrage captures attention, and attention is the business model.
Do echo chambers explain everything?
Not entirely. It’s true that algorithms often show us more of what we already agree with, reinforcing our perspectives and limiting the range of voices we encounter. In studies during the 2020 U.S. election, researchers found that most users’ feeds leaned heavily toward like-minded content. But here’s the surprising part: when that “echo chamber” exposure was deliberately reduced, polarization didn’t shrink overnight. In other words, the relationship between echo chambers and division is real, but it’s more complex than a simple cause-and-effect.
YouTube tells a similar story. Some research shows pathways into “rabbit holes” where viewers are nudged toward increasingly extreme content. Other studies, however, suggest the opposite, i.e, that YouTube’s recommendations sometimes pull viewers back toward more mainstream material, or that only a small group already predisposed to extremism consistently consume radical content.
The truth is somewhere in the middle: algorithms can intensify existing divides, but they don’t create polarization out of thin air.
What this means for us is sobering. We can’t lay all the blame on the platforms, as though they are the only culprit.
Algorithms amplify what we already lean toward.
If what we lean toward is outrage, we’ll see more outrage. If what we lean toward is grace, peacemaking, and patience, the algorithm can learn that, too. The deeper issue is not only what content circulates, but what desires we cultivate, and that’s where discipleship matters most.
The business behind outrage
Engagement-optimized feeds reward content that elicits fast emotion (anger, fear, contempt).
News and creators learn the game. “Out-group” posts drive more clicks and shares. Out-group posts are social-media posts that focus on a group the author doesn’t identify with, especially a perceived opponent (political, ideological, religious, cultural), often to critique, blame, mock, or morally judge that group.
Platforms have historically nudged emotional reactions up the ranking stack (e.g., “angry” ≈ 5× a like). link
This doesn’t mean every algorithm is a brainwashing machine or that political attitudes flip overnight. It does mean that our daily attention, what we see, share, and feel, gets trained toward contempt unless we practice counter-formation.
Not just what we THINK, but who we are BECOMING
Neil Postman warned that our media aren’t neutral pipes; “our media are our metaphors… [they] create the content of our culture.”
Social feeds form us long before we notice.
Postman was writing about television, but the principle carries: every medium has a built-in bias that quietly trains its users. In the feeds on our phones the defaults are speed, spectacle, and scoring. Speed rewards immediate reaction over patient reflection. Spectacle prefers what is vivid, emotional, and outrageous over what is careful and true. Scoring (likes, shares, ratios) turns conversation into performance.
Live inside that environment and impatience begins to feel normal, nuance begins to feel weak, and people shrink into avatars of “us” or “them.” The medium has already coached the message, and the message has already started coaching our hearts.
Christians need to name that formation so we can resist it. Scripture calls us to a different pace and posture: “be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger” (Jas 1:19–20); to speak only what “builds up” (Eph 4:29); to let love be “patient and kind” (1 Cor 13:4). If the platform trains reactivity, the fruit will be reactivity; if we train attention toward God and neighbor, the fruit will be the Spirit’s (Gal 5:22–23). Awareness is not cynicism, it is the first step in counter-formation.
If my daily liturgy is doom-scrolling and my regular sacrament is shared contempt, then my heart is being discipled into enmity.
Algorithms don’t make disciples; habits do… but the feed is very good at handing us the wrong ones.
A simple way to remember this: name the bias, practice the counter-virtue.
Speed → patience and delay: pause before posting, seek understanding first (Prov 18:13).
Spectacle → truth and context: check sources, prefer the slow truth over the quick take (Prov 18:17).
Scoring → secrecy and service: choose conversations that won’t perform for the crowd (Matt 6:1–4).
Out-group bait → intercession and hospitality: pray for and, when possible, be with the people you are tempted to caricature (Matt 5:44; Rom 12:9–18).
Seen this way, the “algorithm” is not just a technical system but a spiritual classroom. Either it disciples us into contempt, or we bring deliberate practices that retrain our loves toward Christ and our neighbor.
N. T. Wright is helpful here. He reminds us that virtue doesn’t spring fully formed in a crisis; it is cultivated by “a thousand small choices” that, over time, become second nature. (After You Believe) We don’t stumble into patience or courage when the moment demands it, we are trained into them through daily practices. The same is true of vice. Every time I choose to click, share, or comment in contempt, I am reinforcing a habit, even if it feels trivial. Over months and years those micro-decisions shape my reflexes until they become “what comes naturally.”
Wright compares this to the training of a musician or athlete. You don’t improvise skill under pressure; you rely on the muscle memory you’ve practiced when no one was watching. The Christian life works the same way. Paul describes it as putting on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator (Col 3:10). That renewal isn’t a one-time event, it’s a slow rewiring of our instincts.
This is why the algorithm’s pull matters spiritually. It is not only suggesting content; it is offering daily practice in impatience, suspicion, and outrage. If those are the drills we repeat, those will be the reflexes that emerge when pressure comes. But if we deliberately choose habits of attentiveness to God’s Word, charitable speech, and proximity to real people, we are rehearsing for a very different performance: one that looks like Jesus.
As Wright puts it, “Virtue is what happens when wise and courageous choices become second nature.” The challenge for us is clear: Which second nature is being cultivated by our scrolling?
Before We Get Practical
It’s worth saying plainly: the systems themselves need reform.
Calls for algorithmic transparency and user choice aren’t just political slogans for activists, they are matters of justice and human dignity. We should have the right to know why certain posts rise to the top of our feeds, and the freedom to decide if we prefer content ranked by engagement, by recency, or even by our own chosen values. At their best, platforms could give us tools to shape healthier online spaces rather than quietly shaping us for profit.
But those reforms are slow in coming, and they may never arrive in the way we hope. In the meantime, the responsibility for wisdom doesn’t disappear. Even before the system changes, we are not powerless. We can choose different habits. We can resist being discipled into outrage. We can set limits, tune our attention, and practice a kind of counter-formation that keeps us tethered to Christ rather than to the feed. That’s what the next section is about: practical strategies for staying awake to the ways we are being shaped, and for training our loves toward something better.
Counter-Formation Strategies
“Attention is the beginning of devotion.” Mary Oliver
1) Tune the inputs that you can (curation as discipleship)
One of the simplest but most important ways to resist being discipled by the algorithm is to become intentional about what we allow into our attention. Every “follow,” every “like,” and even every quiet pause sends a signal to the system. Over time, these small signals shape the stories, images, and voices that dominate our feeds. If we are careless about what we consume, the algorithm will fill the vacuum with what most reliably stirs our emotions, which is far too often outrage, mockery, or fear.
That is why curating our digital diet is an act of discipleship. Following peacemakers, thoughtful writers, and credible sources may not spike our heart rate the way rage-bait does, but it slowly reorients our imagination toward what is honorable and true (Philippians 4:8). On the other hand, choosing to unfollow or mute accounts that thrive on hostility is not a matter of weakness but of wisdom. By starving the algorithm of our clicks and comments, we weaken its hold and strengthen healthier voices.
A practical way to live this out is to set aside time once a month for what is called an “attention examen.” Just as we might examine our conscience in prayer, we can examine our Following list. Ask yourself: Are these accounts helping me love God and neighbor more? Do they stir faith, hope, and love, or do they feed envy, fear, and contempt? In the long run, these small acts of curation shape not only our feeds, but our hearts.
2) Slow the outputs (friction as a spiritual discipline)
Algorithms thrive on immediacy.
They reward us when we react quickly, when we post in anger, clap back at an opponent, or share a headline without pausing to think. But discipleship trains us in a slower rhythm.
James reminds us to be “quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger” (James 1:19).
One way to embody that is to build intentional friction into our online lives. Before posting or replying, we can pause for just ten minutes. That pause is not wasted time; it is space for the Spirit to check our motives and measure our words.
In that moment we can ask three simple but searching questions: Is it true? Is it loving? Is it necessary? (Ephesians 4:29; Matthew 12:36).
This kind of holy delay not only keeps us from regrettable words, it reshapes us into people whose speech bears grace instead of contempt.
3) Sabbath your feed (limits for love)
Our souls need rest, but the feed never stops.
That’s why we must practice intentional limits. Just as God commanded Israel to rest one day in seven, so we need to learn the art of digital Sabbath. For some, this may look like a weekly twenty-four-hour fast from social media; for others, it may begin with a smaller practice, such as refusing to scroll before prayer and Scripture in the morning. The point is not digital heroics, but re-centering.
By stepping away from the constant hum of updates, we open ourselves again to presence: with God, with our families, and with our neighbors. Psalm 1 paints the blessed life as one rooted beside streams of water, not swept along by the flood of voices. Practicing Sabbath for our feeds helps us recover that rootedness.
4) Practice prebunking (teach before the crisis)
Too often Christians only talk about misinformation after it has already taken hold.
But research suggests that “prebunking”, i.e., training people ahead of time to spot manipulation, works better than correcting errors after the fact. In the same way we teach people to recognize counterfeit money by handling the real thing, we can learn to spot common online tactics like scapegoating, fear-mongering, or false comparisons.
A church small group could spend fifteen minutes exploring a simple prebunking guide or even playing the free Bad News game, which teaches you how propaganda works by letting you try it in a safe, playful environment. These practices don’t just sharpen our critical thinking; they strengthen our communal witness. When Christians are less easily fooled, we shine as people of truth in a world of distortion.
5) Pursue proximity (the anti-algorithm)
The internet rewards caricature.
It is easier, and often more profitable, to mock “those people” than to sit down with them. But in real life, proximity changes the heart. When you share a meal, serve alongside someone, or simply hear their story, contempt has less room to grow.
The Apostle Paul urges us in Romans 12 to “live in harmony with one another” and to “practice hospitality.” That doesn’t happen in echo chambers or comment threads… it happens across tables, in neighborhoods, and through phone calls. If the algorithm disciples us into seeing our opponents as enemies, proximity re-teaches us to see them as neighbors. The more we intentionally step into relationships across differences, the more the Spirit grows compassion in place of caricature.
6) Cultivate cruciform speech
Finally, our words themselves must be reshaped by the cross. Online, it is easy to treat speech as a weapon: something to win arguments, earn applause, or wound enemies. But Jesus redefines power through self-giving love.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer once wrote, “The first service one owes to others… is listening.”
Cruciform speech begins with listening, even online. It refuses to trade in sarcasm or cheap shots. It speaks truth, but with gentleness and love. And it is willing, like Christ, to bear misunderstanding rather than to join the cycle of contempt. Every time we choose this kind of speech, we rehearse the reality of the cross: strength made perfect in weakness, love stronger than hate.
7) A posting covenant for leaders
Those who serve as leaders in the church—whether preachers, teachers, or ministry volunteers—carry a weight that extends even into their digital lives. The way we speak online teaches just as much as our sermons and lessons. For that reason, it is worth adopting a kind of covenant for our posting, a shared commitment that guides our presence on social media.
At the heart of such a covenant is a posture of listening. Before we post, we pledge to slow down, to seek understanding, and to let the Spirit test our motives. We commit not to reward contempt with engagement, even when mockery or outrage would gain us more visibility. Instead, we choose words that clarify rather than confuse, that correct without humiliating, and that build up rather than tear down.
This doesn’t mean shying away from truth. It means remembering that truth is most powerful when it comes clothed in grace.
Accuracy must always outweigh virality; faithfulness must always outrank cleverness. In practice, this covenant asks us to weigh every comment and every share with a simple but sobering question: Does this reflect Christ? If it does not, then silence may be the most faithful option.
Such a posting covenant will look different in detail for each community, but the spirit remains the same. Our online witness should echo the words of Jesus: “By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another” (John 13:35).
We will be quick to listen before we post.
We will not reward contempt with engagement.
We will correct, not perform; clarify, not dunk.
We will aim for accuracy over virality.
A closing prayer
“Lord, train our attention toward what is true, honorable, just, pure, lovely, and commendable. Make us slow to anger and quick to bless. Let our words give grace to those who hear. Convert our scrolling into intercession, our posting into peacemaking, and our feeds into fields where your Spirit grows good fruit. Amen.”
This is well prepared and presented, thank you!