In social media the user is simultaneously the consumer and the product; just as we are both the audience and performer. It does not end there, though.
In this modern economy of commodified outrage, the offended are so often offensive in turn. It’s a cycle that self-perpetuates and enriches the host of the arena.
Free content.
Further, those who seek to cause and take offense are often best described by the insults they throw at others. The conservative tough guys who deride “snowflakes” and yet are triggered into quivering puddles by the simple existence of gay or transgendered people. The liberal activists who are just as intolerant of differences of thinking than those they label bigots.
Each two sides of the same coin, arguing in turn until they’re just a blur of unpleasantness.
Muse Vassal 