Outrage-driven provocation is a status strategy with no downside in the attention economy

Evidence

Where Obama sought to unite a “purple” America, Trump took a page from Paris Hilton’s playbook: Doing loathsome things had no downside as long as the ensuing outrage won the news cycle. This also echoed the gambit of heels in professional wrestling. Whether in “his rallies, his debates, his interviews, [or] his social-media posts,” wrote Atlantic staff writer John Hendrickson, “Trump relied on WWE tactics.” — W. David Marx, Blank Space, 435

Categorization

• SEED: Could seed an essay connecting the Paris Hilton / WWE ‘heel’ logic to omnivore-monoculture attention dynamics — negative status signaling as a rival to positive status signaling.
• XREF: connects to: Being attacked beats being ignored in the attention economy — Yves Citton, The Ecology of Attention, 155