If you stub your toe you should have inflammation for a short time as part of a healing process. A lot of people have chronic inflammation, however, for instance their lungs get inflamed from exposure to otherwise harmless pollen and develop asthma. Even if the trigger is removed the inflammatory process can feed on itself which is why someone like that is prescribed anti-inflammatory drugs.
As an acute condition I think anger is helpful if (1) you get mad, and (2) take action to not be mad anymore. If you are angry about something for weeks, months, years, decades, etc. is a chronic condition and no longer helpful even if it is justified, righteous, whatever. My take is that some small amount of anger online, say ε = 0.05 is acute and the remaining 1-ε is chronic and unhelpful.
There are other things that promote engagement (mastodonsters like my flower photos, I can't get enough of people consorting with foxes on YouTube shorts) but anger is one of the most effective of them and online platforms have commercial reasons to promote outrage.
So far as politics go it is just not helpful that anti-vax people are angry at the government because conspiracy theories fill the place that religion used to fill, even in religious people who've given up on the good word of our Saviour and now worship idols like The Donald. Somebody else gets angry because somebody else didn't wear a mask so they wear two masks and tell everyone about this. The story on Twitter was that these people inflame each other but Mastodon, Parler and such show that "one side" can keep itself angry about chronic conditions even when "one side" has been successful about excluding "the other". Thus my ℞.
If you stub your toe you should have inflammation for a short time as part of a healing process. A lot of people have chronic inflammation, however, for instance their lungs get inflamed from exposure to otherwise harmless pollen and develop asthma. Even if the trigger is removed the inflammatory process can feed on itself which is why someone like that is prescribed anti-inflammatory drugs.
As an acute condition I think anger is helpful if (1) you get mad, and (2) take action to not be mad anymore. If you are angry about something for weeks, months, years, decades, etc. is a chronic condition and no longer helpful even if it is justified, righteous, whatever. My take is that some small amount of anger online, say ε = 0.05 is acute and the remaining 1-ε is chronic and unhelpful.
There are other things that promote engagement (mastodonsters like my flower photos, I can't get enough of people consorting with foxes on YouTube shorts) but anger is one of the most effective of them and online platforms have commercial reasons to promote outrage.
So far as politics go it is just not helpful that anti-vax people are angry at the government because conspiracy theories fill the place that religion used to fill, even in religious people who've given up on the good word of our Saviour and now worship idols like The Donald. Somebody else gets angry because somebody else didn't wear a mask so they wear two masks and tell everyone about this. The story on Twitter was that these people inflame each other but Mastodon, Parler and such show that "one side" can keep itself angry about chronic conditions even when "one side" has been successful about excluding "the other". Thus my ℞.
See
https://www.amazon.com/Anger-Kills-Seventeen-Strategies-Cont...