When in doubt, check your intentions. - Mark Manson

Intimacy is the feeling you can completely be yourself around someone no matter what.

The current media environment both encourages and perpetuates these reactions because, after all, it’s good for business. The writer and media commentator Ryan Holiday refers to this as “outrage porn”: rather than report on real stories and real issues, the media find it much easier (and more profitable) to find something mildly offensive, broadcast it to a wide audience, generate outrage, and then broadcast that outrage back across the population in a way that outrages yet another part of the population. This triggers a kind of echo of bullshit pinging back and forth between two imaginary sides, meanwhile distracting everyone from real societal problems. It’s no wonder we’re more politically polarized than ever before.

Psychologists sometimes refer to this concept as the 'hedonic treadmill': the idea that we're always working hard to change our life situation, but we actually never feel very different.