The Outrage Olympics: How Did We Get Here?

It’s official: America is addicted to outrage. These days, it only takes a single offhand comment, a stray tweet, or a slightly different opinion to find yourself at the center of a virtual firing squad. The threshold for “I hate you” has never been lower—and Fox’s Tyrus, never one to mince words, thinks the whole thing is completely bonkers.

On a recent panel, Tyrus and his co-hosts pulled back the curtain on the state of America’s national discourse, and what they found was a country so divided, so quick to outrage, that even they couldn’t help but laugh at the absurdity. “One disagreed opinion and it’s like, ‘I want nothing but the worst for you,’” Kat Timpf lamented. “How did we get here?” The answer, it seems, is a toxic brew of social media, echo chambers, and a desperate need for validation.

Fake Fury, Real Loneliness: Who Are These Angry People Anyway?

Tyrus, who crisscrosses the country meeting Americans of all stripes, isn’t buying the narrative that we’re all at each other’s throats. “No one ever yells at me,” he said, shrugging off the idea that the country is a powder keg. “They’re always like, ‘Hi.’” So where does all this hate come from? According to Tyrus, it’s the loudest, loneliest voices online—the ones who rant to a camera because no one in their real life will listen.

“If you’re putting your anger out in front of a camera, that means nobody in the immediate vicinity wants to hear a word you have to say,” he quipped. These are the people who live for likes, who fish for validation, and who get angrier when the internet doesn’t give them the applause they crave.

Keep It To Yourself: The Lost Art of Small Talk

The solution, Tyrus says, is simple: keep your politics—and your drama—at home. “Being uncensored about politics is about as smart as being uncensored about your love life or your finances. Certain things you leave at home,” he advised. Instead of launching into a tirade about “that fascist Hitler guy who closed down the border,” try something radical: “Hey, nice day. Do you think it’s going to rain?” In other words, remember how to be a human being.

Comedy, Cancel Culture, and the Generation That Can’t Take a Joke

Rich, another panelist, took the conversation in a darker, funnier direction, admitting he’s blocked over 3,500 people online for hate mail and that even his wife has muted him on Instagram. “If you’re under 25, you shouldn’t be allowed to have an opinion,” he joked, poking fun at the endless polls and studies that claim to represent America’s mood.

But beneath the laughs lies a real concern: we’ve lost our sense of humor, our ability to disagree without declaring war, and our willingness to see each other as more than just avatars for political tribes.

The Bottom Line: We Have More In Common Than We Think

For all the noise, all the outrage, and all the social media drama, the truth is most Americans aren’t nearly as angry as the headlines suggest. “We actually have more in common with each other than we think,” Kat reminded viewers. The real world isn’t Twitter, and most people just want to get through the day without a fight.

Tyrus sums it up best: “This doesn’t make any sense.” And maybe that’s the point. When outrage becomes the default, reason goes out the window. Maybe it’s time we all took a breath, logged off, and remembered how to talk to each other again—without the hate, the drama, or the hashtags.

Because at the end of the day, nobody ever changed the world by yelling into their phone.