"tyranny-of-the-people-with-a-chip-on-their-shoulder-and-time-to-burn"

A Hacker News commentator wrote:

if you open up moderation then you'll get Tyranny of the Majority [1]. But in the internet age it would actually be tyranny-of-the-people-with-a-chip-on-their-shoulder-and-time-to-burn.

[1] : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyranny_of_the_majority

I wonder if there is a better or at least shorter term for "tyranny-of-the-people-with-a-chip-on-their-shoulder-and-time-to-burn"?

Solution 1:

I would say it's the tyranny of the outrage mob....

The only definition I found was on UrbanDictionary.com, and it's not entirely satisfactory, so I will paraphrase it:

a group of people who attack whatever will provide the maximum amount of virtue signaling, attempting to silence and punish people who disagree with them by harassment, bullying, and shaming.

Examples of usage:

The Sociology of the Academic Outrage Mob
What We Are Reading: The Outrage Mob
We Can't Let the Outrage Mob Win
How Outrage Mobs Silence Academics

Solution 2:

The Entitled Idle.

There is some nuance that may capture much of what is being said.

The idle implies time on their hands and denotes laziness. It also implies people who are not constructively solving problems themselves.

Chip on their shoulder is defined as

to have an angry or unpleasant attitude or way of behaving caused by a belief that one has been treated unfairly in the past

Entitled is defined as

believing oneself to be inherently deserving of privileges or special treatment

The two differ largely in the attitude of the offender. This can be smuggled back in as

the irate, entitled & idle

Irate:

Full of or characterized by extreme anger; enraged

TFD

This trades brevity for a more explicit accounting of the disposition of the offender.

Solution 3:

The term "vocal minority" is a common phrase used in political discourse, used to refer to a group that is small in number but disproportionately vocal within the field of public discourse. Perhaps Tyrany of the Vocal Minority would fit here.

Solution 4:

I would say no, there isn't a better way to phrase this. It's a nice bit of writing. The author has taken three well-known idioms - "tyranny of the majority", "chip on the shoulder", and "time to burn" - and combined them in a clever way to make a point.

The point they are making is not exactly brand-new, but it is pretty recent, and there isn't any well-established phrase or idiom for it.

The idea could be expressed directly, without the idioms. For instance, I could say "Unmoderated discussions on the internet tend to be dominated by people who are angry about some issue and have the spare time to argue about it." That might be better in something like an academic paper. But in a news article, it would be less effective at getting the reader's attention.

Solution 5:

Chattering Classes is a shorter phrase which encapsulates the idea. But for the specific quote you give the longer phrase works better because it draws out the contrast between pre-Internet and post-Internet moderation.