The Contempt Economy: The World We've Taught Ourselves to Accept
The moment society starts losing its decency isn't necessarily when somebody behaves like an arsehole.
It's when everybody else starts organising their lives around the arseholes.
And I wonder whether that's precisely what's beginning to happen.
Think about the ordinary adjustments we make to accommodate inconsiderate people.
The passenger who decides not to ask somebody to move their bag because they can't be bothered with the potential confrontation.
The shop assistant who apologises repeatedly to an aggressive customer, even though they've done absolutely nothing wrong.
The person who turns up their headphones to drown out somebody else's videos on a train.
The family who move away from a group of people behaving unpleasantly in a restaurant.
The child who laughs along when somebody mocks them because admitting they're hurt would probably make things worse.
None of those responses is necessarily unreasonable.
Sometimes avoiding confrontation is the sensible thing to do.
Sometimes it's the safest.
Sometimes you simply haven't got the energy to deal with another unpleasant interaction.
But there's something about the cumulative effect that I find deeply troubling.
Because every time ordinary people have to reorganise their behaviour around somebody else's lack of consideration, something changes.
The person creating the problem may not experience any meaningful inconvenience.
The people around them do.
And over time, that arrangement can begin feeling entirely normal.
We stop expecting the person behaving badly to accommodate everybody else.
We start expecting everybody else to accommodate the person behaving badly.
And suddenly, something that should have been considered unacceptable has become another ordinary feature of everyday life.
Not because people necessarily approve of it.
But because they've become accustomed to dealing with it.
And I think there's an enormous difference between learning to live with something and deciding that something is acceptable.
Yet increasingly, I worry that we're confusing the two.
Nobody decided this was how things should be
I don't think society wakes up one morning and collectively decides to become less considerate.
There isn't a meeting.
Nobody sends around a questionnaire.
We don't get an opportunity to vote on whether humiliating strangers should become entertainment or whether people should be allowed to behave aggressively towards shop assistants.
Things change gradually.
A particular behaviour becomes more visible.
People encounter it repeatedly.
Some start imitating it.
Others begin expecting it.
Some challenge it.
Others decide it isn't worth the confrontation.
And eventually, the behaviour starts feeling like an ordinary part of the environment.
That's the process I keep coming back to throughout this investigation.
Not necessarily a dramatic transformation in human nature.
Something considerably more subtle.
A gradual adjustment in what people expect, tolerate and consider normal.
And I think that's precisely why these changes can be so difficult to recognise.
Because we're usually looking for something dramatic.
A new law.
A significant social event.
An obvious change in behaviour.
A statistic demonstrating that something has increased by a particular percentage.
But what if the most consequential changes aren't happening through dramatic events?
What if they're happening through millions of small interactions in which people gradually adjust their expectations?
You stop being surprised when somebody behaves aggressively.
You stop expecting people to apologise when they're unnecessarily rude.
You stop challenging the person who makes everybody else uncomfortable.
You start warning your children that certain behaviours are simply things they'll have to deal with.
And eventually, you can't remember when those behaviours started feeling normal.
That's the possibility I find concerning.
Not because people have suddenly forgotten the difference between right and wrong.
But because they may be gradually lowering their expectations of how other people should behave.
And that can change a society without anybody ever consciously agreeing to the change.
There's a difference between what people do and what people accept
Social psychologists have been investigating the influence of social norms for decades.
In 1990, Robert Cialdini, Raymond Reno and Carl Kallgren published research examining how people's behaviour was influenced by their perceptions of what others did and what others approved of.
They distinguished between two important kinds of social norms.
Descriptive norms concern what people believe others typically do.
Injunctive norms concern what people believe others consider acceptable.
That distinction is more interesting than it might initially appear.
Because the two aren't necessarily aligned.
You might believe littering is unacceptable while regularly seeing people drop rubbish.
You might believe public humiliation is wrong while repeatedly witnessing it being celebrated.
You might believe people should treat retail workers respectfully while increasingly expecting those workers to receive abuse.
What people believe should happen and what they observe happening can be very different.
And that difference creates an uncomfortable question.
What happens when the behaviour we repeatedly witness begins influencing our understanding of what society is prepared to accept?
Imagine a classroom in which one child is regularly mocked.
Most of the other children might privately believe the behaviour is wrong.
They might dislike what's happening.
They might feel uncomfortable.
But if nobody challenges it, something interesting can happen.
The child responsible may interpret the silence as acceptance.
The other children may begin believing that nobody else is particularly bothered.
And the person being targeted may conclude that challenging the situation will achieve nothing.
Nobody necessarily needs to approve of the behaviour for it to continue.
The perception of approval can be enough to influence how people respond.
Psychologists describe some situations like this through the concept of pluralistic ignorance.
People privately disagree with something but mistakenly believe that others accept it.
And because they believe everybody else accepts it, they hesitate to challenge it themselves.
Now introduce social media.
An environment where visible approval is quantified.
Where laughter can be measured.
Where reactions are displayed.
Where comments provide immediate evidence of what a particular audience appears to appreciate.
And where silence is almost impossible to interpret.
You can see the five hundred people who liked a humiliating video.
You can't see the fifty thousand people who watched it and thought it was unnecessarily cruel.
You can see the comments celebrating somebody's offensive remark.
You can't see the people who disapproved and simply carried on with their day.
And I think that creates the potential for a remarkable distortion.
We may begin interpreting the behaviour of a relatively small, enthusiastic audience as evidence of wider social acceptance.
Even when most people wouldn't dream of behaving that way themselves.
What if almost everybody thinks everybody else is the problem?
There's a particularly interesting piece of research that connects with this.
In 2024, Claire Robertson, Kareena Del Rosario and Jay Van Bavel published an analysis examining how social media can distort perceptions of social norms.
They described the digital environment as something resembling a funhouse mirror.
A distorted reflection of society.
Their argument was that extreme behaviour can become disproportionately visible online, creating misleading impressions of what other people believe and how they behave.
The implication is fascinating.
You don't necessarily have to change people's underlying personalities to influence the way they experience society.
You can change what they believe society is like.
And if those beliefs influence how they behave towards other people, the consequences may extend well beyond the screen.
Consider how easily that could happen.
Someone spends time scrolling through videos of public confrontations.
They see people aggressively challenging strangers.
They read comment sections full of personal insults.
They watch ordinary disagreements turn into spectacles.
They encounter repeated examples of people treating one another with contempt.
Eventually, they might begin forming a particular impression.
People are selfish.
People are aggressive.
Nobody has any consideration anymore.
Everybody seems permanently angry.
And perhaps they begin entering ordinary social situations with those expectations.
Now imagine that they're dealing with somebody who has developed similar expectations.
Two people.
Both anticipating hostility.
Both slightly defensive.
Both primed to interpret ambiguous behaviour negatively.
Neither necessarily wanting a confrontation.
Yet the interaction becomes confrontational anyway.
Not because either person is fundamentally unpleasant.
But because they've begun expecting unpleasantness.
And those expectations influence their behaviour.
That's a possibility I find genuinely fascinating.
Because it suggests that the digital environment might influence society even when the behaviour it presents isn't representative of society.
We could be learning to treat people according to a distorted version of humanity rather than the people actually standing in front of us.
And perhaps our reactions then contribute to making the physical world a little more like the distorted one.
That's not a relationship we've conclusively established across society.
But it connects several important areas of research.
How people perceive social norms.
How those perceptions influence expectations.
How exposure to rudeness can affect subsequent interactions.
And how digital platforms determine which examples of behaviour receive the greatest visibility.
I think the possibility deserves considerably more attention.
Because the implications extend much further than offensive comedy.
They extend into the way we experience other human beings.
Perhaps we've become accustomed to the wrong version of humanity
There's something that bothers me about the modern online environment.
It's not simply that we encounter unpleasant behaviour.
It's the possibility that we're gradually losing perspective on how representative that behaviour really is.
Think about the people you encounter during an ordinary week.
The person who serves you a coffee.
The stranger who holds a door open.
The parent collecting their child from school.
The person walking their dog.
The colleague who asks how you're getting on.
The driver who gives way.
The elderly gentleman who stops for a conversation.
The vast majority of those interactions are generally unremarkable.
And that's a good thing.
People behaving reasonably shouldn't be remarkable.
It should be the default.
But ordinary consideration doesn't necessarily make particularly compelling entertainment.
Somebody patiently waiting their turn in a supermarket isn't likely to generate a million views.
A driver politely allowing another car through a narrow gap doesn't usually attract thousands of comments.
And a stranger helping somebody carry their shopping doesn't necessarily inspire hundreds of people to share the interaction.
Those things happen.
Constantly.
But they rarely demand our attention.
Now compare that with somebody having an almighty argument in a supermarket.
A stranger being humiliated.
A passenger becoming aggressive.
A person making a spectacularly offensive remark.
Those behaviours are unusual enough to attract attention.
And increasingly, the attention itself can become a reason for the behaviour to receive wider distribution.
This creates a rather peculiar situation.
The most provocative examples of human behaviour may become some of the most visible.
While the ordinary, considerate behaviour that makes society function remains largely unnoticed.
And then we use what we've been repeatedly shown to inform our understanding of society.
I think that's a problem.
Not because the unpleasant behaviour isn't real.
It is.
And sometimes it deserves considerable attention.
But because repeated exposure to exceptional behaviour can potentially make the exceptional feel ordinary.
And that can distort our expectations.
In 2023, William Brady and colleagues published research demonstrating that people could overestimate the intensity of moral outrage expressed by others online.
Those exaggerated perceptions influenced beliefs about wider group hostility.
That's a significant finding.
Because it suggests that people aren't simply absorbing information.
They're interpreting it.
Drawing conclusions.
Forming expectations.
And potentially building an understanding of other people that differs from reality.
The unsettling possibility is that we might be becoming less trusting of one another without necessarily having good reason to be.
And perhaps that's one of the quietest costs of the environment we've created.
The people behaving badly aren't paying the full price
There's another way of thinking about this that I find particularly useful.
Consider who bears the consequences when somebody behaves inconsiderately.
A passenger decides to play videos through their phone speakers.
They enjoy their entertainment.
Everybody else experiences the noise.
Someone occupies two seats on a busy train.
They enjoy the extra space.
Another person stands.
A customer decides to take their frustration out on a shop assistant.
They release their anger.
The employee absorbs it.
A person makes an unnecessarily cruel joke about somebody.
They get a laugh.
The other person experiences the embarrassment.
The benefits and consequences aren't equally distributed.
One person gains something.
Other people pay part of the price.
And the more normal that arrangement becomes, the more we're effectively asking considerate people to subsidise inconsiderate behaviour.
Not necessarily financially.
Emotionally.
Socially.
Through patience.
Through accommodation.
Through the inconvenience of having to manage somebody else's lack of restraint.
And I think that's an extraordinarily important way of understanding the problem.
Because the person creating the inconvenience might not even recognise what they're doing.
They're simply enjoying their music.
Expressing their frustration.
Delivering a joke.
Protecting their personal space.
From their perspective, the behaviour might seem entirely reasonable.
But the people around them experience something very different.
And increasingly, I wonder whether we've become reluctant to challenge that imbalance.
We've become accustomed to telling the considerate person how to cope.
Put your headphones on.
Move somewhere else.
Ignore the comments.
Don't rise to it.
Walk away.
Develop a thicker skin.
And sometimes that advice is absolutely appropriate.
Particularly when challenging somebody could put you at risk.
But there's a fundamental problem if those responses become our entire solution.
Because we're repeatedly asking the person affected by the behaviour to adapt, while doing comparatively little to challenge the behaviour itself.
We've become remarkably good at teaching people how to tolerate a lack of consideration.
I'm not convinced we're equally good at teaching people to show it.
And that's something I think deserves challenging.
The cost of constantly adapting
Human beings are extraordinarily adaptable.
We learn to live with inconvenience.
We adjust our expectations.
We develop ways of avoiding unpleasant situations.
And we become accustomed to environments that might once have surprised us.
That adaptability is enormously valuable.
It's part of what allows people to navigate difficult circumstances and continue functioning.
But I think there's a danger in treating our ability to adapt as evidence that the environment itself is acceptable.
We can adapt to a noisy workplace.
That doesn't necessarily make the noise desirable.
We can become accustomed to being constantly interrupted.
That doesn't mean the interruptions have stopped affecting us.
We can learn to tolerate unnecessary hostility.
That doesn't mean hostility has become harmless.
And we can develop strategies for avoiding inconsiderate people without believing their behaviour should be accepted.
I think the difference matters.
Because adaptation is a response to an environment.
Acceptance is a judgement about that environment.
And the two shouldn't automatically become the same thing.
Yet I wonder whether they gradually merge when something becomes sufficiently familiar.
A child learns to avoid a particular group because they don't want to be mocked.
A retail employee learns which customers might become aggressive.
A passenger learns not to challenge somebody behaving unpleasantly.
A teacher learns to anticipate hostility from certain parents.
Everyone develops ways of managing the situation.
And life continues.
But what happens if the wider society begins accepting those adjustments as simply the way things are?
What if we stop asking why the adjustments became necessary?
Or whether the behaviour creating them should be tolerated?
That's where I think familiarity becomes dangerous.
Not necessarily because it changes our personal values overnight.
But because it can gradually lower the standards we're prepared to expect from other people.
And once those standards are lowered, restoring them becomes considerably more difficult.
We might be teaching our children to expect too little
As a father, this is one of the consequences I find most concerning.
I want my daughters growing up understanding that the world isn't always fair.
People will disappoint them.
Some will behave unpleasantly.
Others will misunderstand them.
And occasionally, they'll encounter people who seem determined to make life unnecessarily difficult.
I don't want them frightened of those experiences.
I want them capable of navigating them.
I want them resilient.
Independent.
Emotionally intelligent.
And confident enough to challenge things they believe are wrong.
But there's something else I want them to understand.
Just because somebody behaves badly doesn't mean their behaviour has to become your standard for what is normal.
I don't want them learning that friendship necessarily involves humiliation.
That confidence means being the loudest person in the room.
That disagreements have to become arguments.
That being funny means making somebody else feel small.
Or that joining a laughing crowd is more important than recognising when somebody is being hurt.
And I certainly don't want them believing that consideration is a weakness.
Because I think we're approaching a particularly strange moment in the way society teaches children about human relationships.
On one hand, we tell them to be kind.
Respect others.
Show empathy.
Think before speaking.
Consider how their behaviour affects people around them.
Then we give them access to entertainment environments in which people frequently attract enormous audiences by doing precisely the opposite.
Adults insulting one another.
People humiliating strangers.
Content creators deliberately provoking reactions.
Comment sections celebrating behaviour that would be unacceptable in many ordinary social situations.
And the children are left trying to reconcile those competing messages.
Of course, not every child will interpret that material in the same way.
Some will recognise the cruelty immediately.
Some will reject it.
Some may become more empathetic precisely because they've witnessed behaviour they find unacceptable.
But others may begin interpreting the approval as evidence that the behaviour is socially desirable.
And I think that's a legitimate concern.
Because children don't simply learn what people do.
They learn what other people appear to approve of.
And if those signals become distorted, their developing understanding of social expectations can become distorted too.
Perhaps we should be spending less time simply telling children to be kind.
And more time helping them recognise the difference between genuine social approval and the spectacle of a crowd reacting to somebody else's discomfort.
Because those aren't the same thing.
And I think that distinction is becoming increasingly important.
Silence isn't always approval. But it can look like it.
There's an uncomfortable question I want to address.
What responsibility do the rest of us have?
The people witnessing the behaviour.
The people scrolling through the content.
The people standing nearby when somebody makes an unnecessarily cruel remark.
The people who recognise that something is wrong but decide not to get involved.
I don't believe everybody has an obligation to confront every unpleasant person they encounter.
That would be ridiculous.
And occasionally dangerous.
Some situations need de-escalating, not challenging.
Sometimes the safest decision is to walk away.
Sometimes supporting the person targeted privately is far more appropriate than confronting the person responsible publicly.
And sometimes you're simply not in a position to do anything.
Those limitations matter.
But I also think we need to recognise that social expectations are influenced by what people appear willing to tolerate.
Imagine somebody repeatedly making unpleasant remarks in a group.
Everybody privately thinks the behaviour is unacceptable.
But nobody says anything.
The person continues.
Eventually, the behaviour becomes part of the group's ordinary experience.
People learn to work around it.
They warn newcomers.
They avoid particular topics.
They make allowances.
And perhaps they start regarding the person as somebody who's simply like that.
But there's a problem.
The entire group has gradually reorganised itself around one person's unwillingness to behave considerately.
And the person responsible may never be required to reflect on their behaviour.
I think similar processes can operate within larger communities.
Workplaces.
Schools.
Friendship groups.
Online communities.
The challenge is finding ways to make positive expectations visible.
Not through public shaming.
Not through mob behaviour.
And not by turning every unpleasant interaction into another confrontation.
But by demonstrating that consideration is still expected.
That humiliation isn't automatically entertainment.
That people can disagree without becoming abusive.
And that behaving reasonably shouldn't be treated as some extraordinary act of generosity.
The answer to normalised contempt isn't necessarily more confrontation.
It may be making consideration visible again.
And there's research suggesting that this can genuinely matter.
The most hopeful finding in the entire investigation
In 2016, Elizabeth Levy Paluck, Hana Shepherd and Peter Aronow published a remarkable study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
They investigated whether social norms around conflict could be influenced within schools.
The experiment involved 56 schools and more than 24,000 students.
Rather than simply delivering another traditional anti-bullying programme, the researchers examined the influence of particular students within school social networks.
Some students occupied positions that made their behaviour especially noticeable to others.
The researchers encouraged selected groups of students to take public positions against particular forms of conflict.
And the results were significant.
Schools receiving the intervention experienced fewer recorded incidents of peer conflict than control schools.
The intervention was especially effective when it involved socially influential students.
Why does that matter?
Because it suggests that changing the perceived expectations of a group can influence behaviour.
Not simply through punishment.
Not simply through rules.
But through the visible actions of people whose behaviour others pay attention to.
Now, this was a school-based intervention.
We shouldn't assume the same approach would produce identical results across social media, workplaces or entire societies.
But I think the principle is enormously encouraging.
Because throughout this series, we've explored the possibility that visible behaviour can influence what people consider normal.
We've discussed how online platforms disproportionately expose people to particular kinds of content.
We've examined how approval can reinforce behaviour.
And we've considered whether repeated exposure to contempt could gradually weaken some of the social expectations that help us treat one another considerately.
But the same general mechanisms needn't operate only in a negative direction.
If people can learn that hostile behaviour is socially rewarded, perhaps they can also learn that considerate behaviour is expected and valued.
If visible approval can reinforce unpleasant behaviour, it can potentially reinforce constructive behaviour too.
And if the actions of influential people help shape social norms, those people have an opportunity to demonstrate something better.
That's not wishful thinking.
It's a possibility supported by evidence from an actual intervention.
And for me, it provides one of the most important conclusions of the entire investigation.
If we've collectively learned to tolerate certain behaviours, we may also be capable of collectively deciding that we expect better.
Not through censorship.
Not through compulsory niceness.
And not through everybody pretending to agree.
Through visible examples of how people can behave differently.
The decent majority isn't powerless
I think there's something else we need to remember.
Most people I encounter in ordinary life are decent.
They aren't looking for an argument.
They aren't desperate to humiliate somebody.
They aren't constantly trying to demonstrate how funny or provocative they are.
They're simply getting on with their lives.
And that matters.
Because there's a danger that spending too much time examining hostility can create an unnecessarily bleak view of humanity.
One in which everybody appears selfish.
Nobody can be trusted.
And consideration becomes something we imagine existed only in the past.
I don't believe that's accurate.
And there's research that offers a useful reminder.
In 2022, psychologists Xuan Zhao and Nicholas Epley published a series of studies examining people's expectations when asking others for help.
Across several methods involving more than 2,000 participants, they found that people tended to underestimate others' willingness to help, underestimate how positively helpers would feel and overestimate how inconvenient the request would be.
That's fascinating.
Because it suggests we can sometimes be unnecessarily pessimistic about other people's willingness to act considerately.
We anticipate inconvenience.
We expect reluctance.
We worry about bothering people.
Yet the people we're approaching may be considerably more willing to help than we imagine.
Now, that doesn't establish that everybody is kind.
Nor does it tell us whether society has become more or less considerate over the past decade.
But it does highlight something important.
Our expectations of others aren't always accurate.
And sometimes, they're less generous than reality deserves.
I think we need to hold on to that.
Because the point of this series isn't to convince people that humanity is becoming irredeemably unpleasant.
Quite the opposite.
It's to question whether the environments we've constructed are encouraging us to develop an unnecessarily hostile understanding of one another.
And whether that understanding can influence how we behave.
If we start assuming that everybody is inconsiderate, we risk approaching perfectly decent people with unnecessary suspicion.
We become defensive.
Less trusting.
More reluctant to engage.
And potentially less willing to extend the consideration we'd like to receive ourselves.
That's not a particularly attractive future.
Nor is it inevitable.
Because the people around us aren't simply characters in the videos we've watched.
They're human beings.
And most deserve to be approached as individuals, not representatives of whatever unpleasant behaviour the algorithm happened to show us yesterday.
We don't need a world without offensive jokes
There's something I want to make absolutely clear before bringing this investigation to a close.
I haven't spent nine essays arguing that offensive humour should disappear.
I don't want Jimmy Carr silenced.
I don't want Ricky Gervais sanitised.
And I certainly don't want to live in a world where people are terrified of saying anything remotely provocative.
That would be an extraordinarily dull place.
And probably a much less intellectually interesting one.
Humour matters.
Disagreement matters.
Provocation matters.
And the freedom to challenge accepted ideas matters.
I believe all of those things.
But I also believe there is a distinction between having the freedom to say something and having the judgement to decide whether it needs saying.
Between publishing entertainment and relentlessly distributing it.
Between finding something funny and deciding that somebody else deserves to be humiliated.
Between challenging an idea and deliberately making a person feel small.
And between tolerating behaviour because we have little choice and accepting that behaviour as an appropriate social standard.
Those distinctions are important.
And I think they've become increasingly blurred in an environment where attention is commercially valuable, outrage attracts engagement and some of the most provocative examples of human behaviour become the most visible.
The comedians aren't necessarily the problem.
The people who imitate them without understanding the context can be.
The people who celebrate humiliation without considering the consequences can be.
The systems that repeatedly amplify particular behaviours without adequately accounting for cumulative exposure may contribute too.
And perhaps the rest of us have a role to play in determining what we allow to become normal.
Not because every individual is responsible for the behaviour of everybody else.
But because society is partly constructed through the expectations we establish together.
And those expectations don't exist independently of what we repeatedly witness, reward and tolerate.
The part no individual study can tell us
There's something important about the way this investigation developed.
It didn't begin with a research paper.
It began with an observation.
I noticed the increasing visibility of provocative comedy and humiliation-based entertainment.
I thought about how dramatically the way we consume that material has changed.
I considered the difference between deliberately choosing to watch a comedian and repeatedly encountering their most provocative material through recommendation algorithms.
Then I began connecting that change with other things I'd noticed.
The increasing willingness of ordinary people to behave as though every interaction needs a punchline.
The apparent normalisation of unnecessarily cruel remarks.
The way social media rewards humiliation.
The possibility that repeated exposure influences our understanding of what behaviour is acceptable.
And the hostility I increasingly notice in ordinary physical environments.
Those observations raised a question.
Could these developments be connected?
Not through a single straightforward chain of causation.
But through a collection of interacting psychological, social and commercial mechanisms.
Repeated exposure.
Social learning.
Norm formation.
Reward.
Imitation.
Desensitisation.
Changing expectations.
Defensive behaviour.
The gradual adjustment of what people consider normal.
Researchers have investigated many of those mechanisms independently.
And the findings are fascinating.
But what particularly interests me is the possibility that their combined influence may be more consequential than the individual studies suggest.
That's where I believe observation and intuition have an important role.
Not as replacements for evidence.
And certainly not as automatic proof that a suspected relationship exists.
But as tools for recognising patterns and asking questions that existing research may not have been designed to answer.
Because sometimes the most interesting questions exist between the studies.
In the relationships nobody has examined collectively.
In the ordinary human experiences that don't fit neatly into a dataset.
And in the cumulative consequences of changes that seem relatively insignificant when considered independently.
I can't prove that algorithmically amplified offensive entertainment has caused a measurable decline in consideration across British society.
The evidence doesn't support that conclusion.
And I'd be doing this investigation a disservice if I pretended otherwise.
But I can examine what we know.
We know that repeated experiences can influence how people interpret and respond to their environments.
We know that perceived social norms can influence behaviour.
We know that online environments can distort perceptions of what other people believe.
We know that visible social feedback can reinforce particular forms of expression.
We know that recommendation systems can amplify material that produces engagement without necessarily improving people's experiences.
And we know that some forms of hostility in the physical world are creating substantial problems.
Those findings don't establish a single causal explanation.
But they provide a foundation for asking whether the combined consequences deserve considerably more investigation.
I think they do.
Because the social changes we're discussing may not happen through dramatic events.
They may emerge gradually.
Across millions of interactions.
Over years.
Until people begin struggling to remember when particular behaviours started feeling ordinary.
And I don't believe we should wait for a single definitive study before questioning whether the direction of those changes is desirable.
The attention we give determines the world we experience
There's another connection that brings this entire subject back to something I've spent years exploring.
Attention.
Because ultimately, much of what we've discussed depends on what we repeatedly notice.
What we watch.
What we engage with.
What we interpret as normal.
And what we allow to influence our expectations.
Our attention doesn't simply determine how we spend our time.
It contributes to how we understand the world.
And I think that's a much more consequential relationship than we generally acknowledge.
If we repeatedly consume hostility, we may begin perceiving hostility as more common.
If we repeatedly witness humiliation being celebrated, we may begin interpreting humiliation as more socially acceptable.
If we consistently see ordinary people behaving aggressively, we may become more inclined to anticipate aggression from strangers.
Those outcomes aren't inevitable.
But they're plausible consequences of psychological mechanisms that deserve further investigation.
And perhaps the most important question isn't simply what all that exposure is doing to us.
It's whether we're recognising the extent to which our attention is being directed in the first place.
Because if we don't notice that the environment has changed, we're unlikely to question the conclusions we're drawing from it.
We start treating what appears on our screens as evidence of what society is like.
We develop expectations.
We adjust our behaviour.
And potentially, we begin contributing to the very changes that concern us.
I think that possibility should make us considerably more deliberate about where we place our attention.
Not frightened.
Not paranoid.
Not constantly trying to avoid anything uncomfortable.
Just more conscious.
More willing to recognise that a feed isn't a representative sample of humanity.
That visible approval isn't necessarily widespread approval.
That somebody else's outrageous behaviour doesn't automatically justify our own.
And that we still have some choice over the standards we bring into our everyday interactions.
Because the algorithms can influence what we encounter.
But they don't get to make every decision about how we behave.
That part still belongs to us.
The world we choose to make normal
I think about those narrow country lanes in South Devon.
Two cars approach one another.
There's not enough room to pass.
Somebody has to reverse.
And often, both drivers start reversing towards the nearest passing place.
Two complete strangers.
Both recognising that the situation requires a little consideration.
Neither demanding that the other person accommodate them.
Neither trying to demonstrate that they're more important.
Neither treating the inconvenience as an opportunity for confrontation.
Just two people solving a problem.
It's an ordinary interaction.
Almost comically unremarkable.
But perhaps that's why I find it so reassuring.
Because it demonstrates that the qualities I'm concerned about haven't disappeared.
Consideration is still there.
Restraint is still there.
Empathy is still there.
The willingness to accommodate another person is still there.
And perhaps the reason those behaviours don't attract much attention is precisely because they're so ordinary.
That's worth remembering.
Because the world isn't simply the collection of dramatic events, offensive remarks and public confrontations that attract our attention.
It's also the millions of ordinary interactions in which people quietly choose to treat one another reasonably.
The stranger who helps.
The driver who gives way.
The employee who remains patient.
The person who apologises.
The friend who recognises when a joke has gone too far.
The child who refuses to join in when somebody else is being mocked.
And the person who has a perfectly devastating insult available but decides that delivering it would serve absolutely no useful purpose.
Those choices rarely become entertainment.
They don't necessarily generate engagement.
And they aren't particularly profitable to amplify.
But they matter.
Enormously.
Because they're part of what makes society function.
And I think we need to become considerably more conscious of protecting them.
Not through moral panic.
Not through censorship.
And not through endlessly complaining that people aren't what they used to be.
Through our own expectations.
Our own behaviour.
And our willingness to recognise that what other people repeatedly do doesn't have to determine what we consider acceptable.
We can acknowledge that hostility exists without treating hostility as inevitable.
We can recognise that some people behave inconsiderately without assuming that everybody will.
We can enjoy provocative comedy without believing humiliation should become a normal feature of everyday interaction.
And we can use social media without accepting that whatever its recommendation systems present represents the world as it actually is.
Those distinctions matter.
Because perhaps the greatest mistake we could make would be allowing the extraordinary volume of unpleasant behaviour we're exposed to convince us that unpleasant behaviour has become the appropriate standard.
It hasn't.
And it doesn't have to.
We don't have to accept the world we're being taught to expect
I started this investigation thinking about comedians.
About how their material is consumed.
About the extraordinary growth of algorithmically recommended entertainment.
And about whether repeated exposure to provocative humour might be influencing how people treat one another.
Nine essays later, I think the most important question has become considerably bigger.
Not whether offensive comedy is acceptable.
Not whether social media is making people aggressive.
Not whether society has become too sensitive.
But whether we're gradually allowing the behaviour we repeatedly witness to determine the standards we're prepared to expect.
Because that's where I think the real danger lies.
Not simply in the person who behaves cruelly.
Not simply in the audience that laughs.
Not simply in the algorithm that decides millions of people might enjoy watching.
But in the possibility that the rest of us gradually become so accustomed to those behaviours that we stop believing things could reasonably be different.
We begin managing around the inconsiderate person.
Avoiding the confrontation.
Tolerating the noise.
Accepting the humiliation.
Expecting the aggression.
And warning the next generation that this is simply how people behave.
Yet perhaps it isn't.
Perhaps it's how some people behave.
Perhaps it's how particular behaviours are disproportionately presented.
Perhaps it's how certain environments reward them.
And perhaps it's what we've gradually become accustomed to tolerating.
Those are different things.
And recognising the difference matters.
Because I don't believe society is defined solely by the worst behaviour we're capable of.
It's also defined by the standards we choose to uphold.
The consideration we extend.
The restraint we exercise.
The way we treat people who cannot offer us anything in return.
And the moments when we decide that another person's dignity matters more than the entertainment we could extract from their discomfort.
That's not weakness.
It's not political correctness.
And it's not some sentimental demand for everybody to be endlessly nice to one another.
It's the recognition that sharing a world with other people carries responsibilities.
That our freedom to act doesn't remove the consequences of our actions.
And that the behaviour we repeatedly tolerate can gradually become part of the environment everyone else has to navigate.
I think we've spent enough time asking people to develop thicker skins.
Perhaps it's time we spent a little more time asking why everybody else's behaviour should require them to.
Because the answer to a society becoming more comfortable with contempt isn't necessarily to become equally comfortable delivering it.
And the answer to an increasingly hostile environment isn't to approach every stranger as though they're already an enemy.
Perhaps the answer begins with refusing to confuse familiarity with acceptability.
Remembering that the loudest people aren't necessarily representative of everyone else.
And recognising that the standards we practise in ordinary life matter considerably more than the performances that dominate our screens.
We don't have to accept the world we're being taught to expect.
We don't have to mistake repeated exposure for social approval.
And we don't have to lower our standards simply because other people appear increasingly comfortable lowering theirs.
Because ultimately, the world we share isn't determined solely by the people who behave the worst.
It's also shaped by what the rest of us decide is worth preserving.
And perhaps that's the most important thing to remember.
The price of contempt isn't paid only by the person being humiliated.
It's paid by everybody who gradually learns to expect less from the people around them.
Until one day, we look at the world we've become accustomed to and wonder when we agreed that this was good enough.
We didn't.
And we don't have to.
Independent research and sources
1. Cialdini, R. B., Reno, R. R., & Kallgren, C. A. (1990). A Focus Theory of Normative Conduct: Recycling the Concept of Norms to Reduce Littering in Public Places. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 58(6), 1015–1026.
Five field studies examining how behaviour is influenced by descriptive norms, concerning what others do, and injunctive norms, concerning what others approve or disapprove of. Establishes an important distinction between behaviour being common and behaviour being considered acceptable.
https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.58.6.1015
2. Robertson, C. E., Del Rosario, K. S., & Van Bavel, J. J. (2024). Inside the Funhouse Mirror Factory: How Social Media Distorts Perceptions of Norms. Current Opinion in Psychology, 60, 101918.
An interdisciplinary review arguing that disproportionately visible extreme behaviour on social media can produce inaccurate perceptions of social norms, including pluralistic ignorance and exaggerated beliefs about polarisation.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.copsyc.2024.101918
3. Brady, W. J., McLoughlin, K. L., Torres, M. P., et al. (2023). Overperception of Moral Outrage in Online Social Networks Inflates Beliefs About Intergroup Hostility. Nature Human Behaviour, 7, 917–927.
Research using a field survey and preregistered experiments to demonstrate that people can overestimate the moral outrage expressed by others online, influencing perceptions of wider group hostility and social expectations.
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-023-01582-0
4. Brady, W. J., McLoughlin, K., Doan, T. N., & Crockett, M. J. (2021). How Social Learning Amplifies Moral Outrage Expression in Online Social Networks. Science Advances, 7(33), eabe5641.
Research analysing 12.7 million tweets from 7,331 users alongside behavioural experiments. Found that social rewards and perceived network norms can influence subsequent expressions of moral outrage. This concerns online outrage, not directly the imitation of offensive comedy.
https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.abe5641
5. Milli, S., Carroll, M., Wang, Y., Pandey, S., Zhao, S., & Dragan, A. D. (2025). Engagement, User Satisfaction, and the Amplification of Divisive Content on Social Media. PNAS Nexus, 4(3), pgaf062.
A preregistered algorithmic audit finding that engagement-based Twitter ranking amplified emotionally charged and hostile political content, including material users did not necessarily prefer. Demonstrates that platform engagement and genuine user preference can diverge.
https://doi.org/10.1093/pnasnexus/pgaf062
6. Paluck, E. L., Shepherd, H., & Aronow, P. M. (2016). Changing Climates of Conflict: A Social Network Experiment in 56 Schools. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 113(3), 566–571.
A large randomised field experiment involving 56 schools and 24,191 students. Public anti-conflict actions by selected students reduced recorded peer conflict, particularly when socially influential students participated. Provides evidence that visible social expectations can be changed constructively.
https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1514483113
7. Zhao, X., & Epley, N. (2022). Surprisingly Happy to Have Helped: Underestimating Prosociality Creates a Misplaced Barrier to Asking for Help. Psychological Science, 33(10), 1708–1731.
Research involving 2,118 participants found that people frequently underestimated others' willingness to help and how positively helpers would experience providing assistance. Demonstrates that expectations of other people's behaviour can be unnecessarily pessimistic.
https://doi.org/10.1177/09567976221097615
8. Ofcom (2026). Experiences of Hateful Content.
Research published in July 2026 using a representative survey of 4,443 UK adults. Found that 77% of adult internet users reported encountering hateful content in the previous year and 58% encountered it at least weekly. These findings measure reported online exposure, not offline hostility or the social consequences of provocative comedy.
https://www.ofcom.org.uk/online-safety/online-abuse/experiences-of-hateful-content
9. Ofcom (2026). Understanding People's Experiences of Distressing and Harmful Content Online.
Qualitative research published in September 2026 exploring how users encounter sensitive and harmful material, including unexpected exposure through personalised recommendations, feeds and comments rather than deliberate searches.
Research gaps and questions for further investigation
The cumulative normalisation of contempt: There is insufficient longitudinal research examining whether years of repeated exposure to humiliation-based entertainment alter people's expectations of interpersonal behaviour, independently of existing attitudes and wider cultural influences.
The relationship between descriptive and injunctive norms: Further investigation is required to understand whether the apparent frequency of hostile behaviour online changes perceptions of what society considers acceptable, even among people who privately disapprove of that behaviour.
Pluralistic ignorance and visible approval: Research should examine how likes, shares, comments and public reactions influence beliefs about the acceptability of humiliating behaviour, particularly when large numbers of people privately disapprove but do not participate.
Online-to-offline behavioural expectations: More longitudinal research is needed to establish whether repeated exposure to online conflict changes how people interpret ambiguous face-to-face interactions, including expectations of hostility, defensiveness and willingness to show consideration.
The consequences of social adaptation: There is limited research specifically examining whether repeated accommodation of inconsiderate behaviour contributes to reduced expectations of courtesy, lower interpersonal trust or declining willingness to challenge poor behaviour.
Variation across individuals and communities: More evidence is needed to establish how age, empathy, emotional maturity, personality, social support, offline relationships and prior experiences influence responses to repeated exposure to provocative or hostile entertainment.
The effects of positive social norms: Evidence from school-based interventions demonstrates that visible social expectations can influence behaviour. Further research should explore how similar mechanisms might encourage consideration, cooperation and constructive disagreement in adult communities, workplaces and online environments.
Algorithmic exposure versus deliberate consumption: Independent studies should distinguish the effects of actively seeking particular types of entertainment from repeated incidental exposure through personalised recommendation systems.
Protecting ordinary consideration: Existing research often focuses on aggression, bullying, hostility and other negative behaviours. More longitudinal measurement of everyday prosocial behaviour—including patience, accommodation, restraint and spontaneous assistance—would help establish whether those behaviours are genuinely declining.
The broader societal relationship: The individual psychological mechanisms examined throughout this series have varying degrees of empirical support. Further research is needed to determine how they interact over time and whether their combined influence contributes meaningfully to changes in social behaviour beyond the digital environment.
The overarching proposition explored throughout The Contempt Economy is that algorithmically amplified exposure to provocative, humiliating and hostile entertainment may contribute to shifts in social norms, expectations and everyday interpersonal behaviour. Existing evidence supports several underlying psychological and technological mechanisms, but does not establish the full proposed relationship as a single demonstrated causal process. The series therefore presents an evidence-informed interpretation and a case for further investigation, rather than a claim of definitive causal proof.