I’m outraged. You’re outraged. They’re all outraged. We’re all outraged!!! Except, what if we’re not?

Lazy media reporters who are too lazy to even actually speak to people anymore are instead constructing Potemkin Villages of fake hate, fake disgust and fake outrage. They’re Contemptkin Villages. No one really lives there. The laziest hacks can build them using tweets, even tweets from anonymous Twitter accounts. Somehow these hacks are employed at places like the BBC and the Times.

“Whip up a little outrage” is an old tabloid directive — the city editor of The Post used to scream it at me across the newsroom circa 1994 — but it did depend on finding someone who matters, or at least someone who represents a lot of people who really are angry. Shameless online editors today figure that readers will click through to anything that is supposedly making anyone mad. And if the underlying story doesn’t actually contain any evidence that anyone has blown his lid, too late! Made ya click.

Ocasio-Cortez jumped on the media’s insistence that the Right had its panties in a wad with a new, brief dance video under the line, “I hear the GOP thinks women dancing are scandalous.” No one said that. She also told a reporter, “It is unsurprising to me that Republicans would think having fun should be disqualifying or illegal,” and no one said that either. AOC’s Contemptkin Village is exactly what editors are looking for these days. If you can’t get a rise out of anyone important, just go on the Internet and find someone, somewhere, who expresses even the mildest disagreement. Then put “Fury,” “Anger” or “Uproar” in your headline.

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