The Images That Make Us: The Visual Outrage Money Machine

In our newest column The Images That Make Us, writer, founder and CEO of MTArt Agency, Marine Tanguy, selects a painting, sculpture, or photograph, and responds to its creative and cultural moment and importance in how it shapes us as individuals. Next up, The Visual Outrage Money Machine.

This week I logged into LinkedIn to find an image shared from the Daily Mail of a man attempting to kiss a woman under the mistletoe with the title: How Wokery Risks Killing Off The Ancient Tradition of Kissing Under The Mistletoe at Christmas Parties. At a time when sexual harassment is widely condemned, this image was chosen to provoke a reaction.

The article was posted less than two hours before I saw it, and already had thousands of comments and hundreds of shares. Success for the Daily Mail!

What better news for the newspaper’s picture editor to know that the image chosen made the paper triple its audience within less than three hours. What’s even more strategic is that by choosing an image that will shock the people that do not read the paper normally (not to say that Daily Mail readers encourage sexual harassment), this image acts directly as a vehicle for audience development and reach.

The anger was tangible in the comments, with people mentioning shock, hate, the patriarchy and sexism – and everytime, they shared it further with their network.

The article has four adverts on display (next to the image and at the bottom of the article) and multiple redirects to other articles. While a click feels inoffensive, and even though most of the comments were challenging what the article stands for – all of these people [commenting, clicking] are fuelling the business model of what I call The Visual Outrage Money Machine.

Yes, as you call out sexism on this article, you are giving money to the Daily Mail. The Daily Mail makes money through views, clicks, shares – and therefore advertising and media presence.

We have gut reactions to visuals. They hit us faster than words, travel faster in our amygdala and shock us more deeply – so we share these images as we look for social support. As a result we fuel an entire industry built on visual triggering.

Right now, visually outraging you across media and social media platforms is worth £120 billion if we count media placements and adverts. Not to mention that these images will make you feel terrible for the full day; we remember 60 per cent of what we see, verses 15 per cent of what we read.

So please this Christmas break, click on the images that fuel a system of values you wish to see and give money to. Click on images that will feed the algorithm for more of these values, more of these images and less of this outrage.