Oxford University Press recently selected “rage-bait” as its Word of the Year. Most people shrugged and scrolled on. But a small detail like this one reveals far more than a dictionary update. What it also does is signal a recognition that the digital age now runs on manufactured hostility. Only marketers have built a system in which provoking anger has replaced persuasion, storytelling, and even basic communication.
As anyone with a conscience could have told them was inevitable, that system is breaking down. And nowhere is the failure clearer than in the implosion that rocked Hollywood throughout 2025.
To understand why, we need to examine how the outrage economy operates.
Outrage is volatile fuel. The moment a creator or marketer deploys it, a countdown begins. I call this phenomenon the Outrage Marketing Egg Timer.
As soon as the post, trailer, ad, or interview goes live, the timer starts, and …
Algorithms reward the spike
Comments clog with performative fury
Analytics dashboards sing their siren song.
Then momentum fades. The metrics taper off, the dopamine drip slows, and the timer hits zero.
At that point, anyone reliant on this method faces a problem: The next post needs to stir even stronger emotions to produce the same results. This escalating pattern traps creators in a cycle of diminishing returns and rising desperation. Audiences grow numb, and authenticity evaporates.
Here’s the lesson the entertainment industry should have learned: Nothing built on anger can maintain stability or create long-term loyalty.
Yet Hollywood embraced the Egg Timer as if it were a perpetual motion machine.
Which is why they’ve now hit the wall.
For more than a decade, the major studios behaved as though controversy alone added value. Their marketing departments engineered campaigns around agitation instead of appeal. Screenshots of Twitter storms replaced thoughtful promotion. Press tours degenerated into combative statements meant to spark argument rather than enthusiasm.
The cracks became impossible to miss by mid-2025. Late summer brought a series of limp openings. Executives insisted the situation looked worse than it actually was.
Then October delivered the weakest domestic box office in nearly three decades.
Productions backed by once-untouchable franchises played to quiet theaters and empty seats. Even the most aggressive digital marketing couldn’t mask public disinterest. The deafening yawn from audiences had distributors questioning whether the traditional release calendar still made economic sense.
But the problem wasn’t scheduling. Nor was it marketing misfires, or weather, or competition from anime.
Audiences used the only leverage they have: They stopped participating.
It turns out that people will only pay to be insulted for so long. They do not plan nights out expecting a lecture or cynical manipulation. Not when they have thousands of hours of alternatives at their fingertips. When the entertainment on offer feels like another scolding, they move on and eventually stop looking back.
Hollywood treated outrage like a renewable resource. The public treated it like spam.
The pattern repeats every time:
A producer uses anger to provoke a response
Engagement spikes but fades almost immediately
The producer escalates, hoping to revive the initial engagement
Audiences drift away as the noise increasingly drowns out the signal.
Neither businesses nor cultures can survive for long on that model. Because rage cannot sustain the artistry needed to connect with other human beings. So creators who depend on outrage eventually exhaust their credibility, then their audience, and finally their relevance.
That is the stage Hollywood descended to in 2025.
But the collapse carries a lesson that creators outside the studio system can put to use right now.
Anyone writing novels, producing videos, making music, or building games should pay close attention to the implosion of legacy entertainment. Because it may have closed some longstanding doors, it cleared new paths.
Here’s how creators can succeed in the post-outrage entertainment economy:
1. Earn attention with substance
Readers and viewers will invest in a creator who respects them. They recognize sincerity and respond to conviction. Most of all, they follow craftsmanship that rewards their time.
2. Anchor stories in fundamentals
Master character, structure, theme, tension, pacing: all the elements Hollywood sidelined. These are eminently Lindy tools. They do not lose power because a trend expires or a platform updates its algorithm.
3. Maintain dignity
Creators who refuse to pander or posture carry a quiet strength. They gain respect by staying focused on the work itself instead of online theatrics.
4. Spark light, not heat
Heat fades in hours. Light grows when a creator commits to depicting truth, even when the world is chasing novelty and conflict.
When the culture grows tired of noise, it turns toward signal. The collapse of the old entertainment-industrial complex shows that moment has arrived. Now the button-pushers have ceded the future to builders.
Hollywood spent years assuming outrage would sustain it indefinitely. Audiences have demonstrated otherwise. But the resulting disruption offers an opportunity for every independent creator willing to step forward.
People crave stories that matter. They want creators who respect their intelligence. And they seek out work made with clarity, purpose, and craft instead of posturing or provocation.
Rage has a shelf life measured in minutes.
Genuine craft endures.
The world is ready for work created with heart and intent. The collapse of 2025 was not the end of storytelling. It signaled the end of manipulation posing as creativity.
Right now, the way is clear for those who are ready to create art worthy of lasting attention and admiration. Sowing wrath can reap a whirlwind that will blow down everything you’ve built. So instead, take that energy and put it into laying a strong foundation.
Brian Niemeier is a best-selling novelist, editor, and Dragon Award winner with over a decade in newpub. For direct, in-person writing and editing insights, join his Patreon.
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The outrage egg timer metaphor captures something critical about why algorithmically driven engagement always collapses eventually. Once the cycle starts, marketers are forced to ratchet up intensity just to maintain baseline traction, which means they burn through audience goodwill way faster than they realize. I remmeber working with a client couple years back who tried to juice social engagement through controvrsy, and within weeks the signal-to-noise ratio tanked so hard that even their most loyal audience started tuning out. The shift back to fundamentals like character and structure feels like the market correcting itself, not just brands pivoting because they feel bad.