One of the most exhausting features of the political Internet is the “Outrage of the Day” culture it perpetuates. In order to generate traffic, blogs hype even the most minor of scandals to SHOCK and APPALL their readers into leaving furious comments and angrily sharing the post with friends and family.

The Outrage Industrial Complex on the Right will launch a half-researched story on a little blog which gets fed to the larger sites, appears on talk radio the next day, and (fingers crossed) Fox News by week’s end. Then the Left reacts to it with mockery and contempt, which gets fed to MSNBC, and (fingers crossed) “The Daily Show” the next day they tape. That’s when the original blog insults Jon Stewart for getting all the details wrong and the cycle starts again.

It’s a pretty good content-generation system if your heart can take the stress and your brain can stand the dumb. Now that all the bloggers are on Twitter and Yik Yak (and whatever the crap Meerkat is), the firehose of outrage is blasting 24/7.