When outrage equals engagement and our worst impulses are being targeted, gamed and monetised, is it too late to escape the rage-bait machine?
Social media is no longer a platform for connection – it's a gladiatorial arena powered by an addictive mix of anger and entertainment. As a result, we're being driven apart: our politics more extreme and empathy on the decline, while those who know how to game the outrage economy for clicks only become more powerful and influential.
In this illuminating session, pioneer communications expert and the strategist behind GetUp! – Australia's first major online political movement – Ed Coper speaks with RMIT's Sushi Das to unmask the architects of this new power. From manosphere gurus and tech oligarchs to political demagogues and corporate giants, he reveals how social media has evolved into an outrage machine that feeds on scandals, spectacle, extremism and notoriety to bait us into constant engagement.
Hear how angertainment has co-opted our social media feeds and taken over our lives.
Presented by The Wheeler Centre and supported by RMIT University
'Portable Stillness' (2025), is an ongoing spatial installation that explores how the making of miniature objects and floating altar-like displays can express memory, collection, and the domestic in transition. Motivated by the instability of diasporic living and continual relocation, Ko Jou Chen constructs handmade structures that carry memory and presence across her shifting environments.
'Slip' is a practice-led research project that explores the poetic qualities of the bluestones that have been discarded in recent construction works around RMIT University. Through the process of moulding and casting these stones into beeswax, Noah Bridger hopes to reimagine Melbourne’s urban landscape.
Chloe Rose Thomas’ exhibition, 'Can I Hold You?' centres on queer community and embodied practices of care, exploring what it means to take traditional photographic portraits of non-normative bodies and the histories they represent.
RMIT University acknowledges the people of the Woi wurrung and Boon wurrung language groups of the eastern Kulin Nation on whose unceded lands we conduct the business of the University. RMIT University respectfully acknowledges their Ancestors and Elders, past and present. RMIT also acknowledges the Traditional Custodians and their Ancestors of the lands and waters across Australia where we conduct our business - Artwork 'Sentient' by Hollie Johnson, Gunaikurnai and Monero Ngarigo.
Learn more about our commitment to Indigenous cultures
