Are you getting really angry online? Why ‘Angertainment’ is our Must-Read Book of 2026
Nick |
If you’ve spent any time online recently and felt an unexplainable knot of frustration tighten in your stomach, you are not alone—and you are exactly who needs to read Ed Coper’s groundbreaking new book, Angertainment: How Social Media Outrage Ruined Everything.
Written by the well-known Australian digital strategist behind GetUp!, this book is, without a shadow of a doubt as we see the impacts of online outrage around us every day, the most important non-fiction release of the year.
Coper delivers a tour de force that perfectly diagnoses the sickness infecting our digital lives. We were promised a utopian global village; instead, as Coper masterfully exposes, we were thrown into a gladiatorial arena where our most primitive instincts are hunted, harvested, and monetised for profit. Coper is not just writing as an armchair observer—he has been waging internet campaigns for decades around the globe, giving him a unique insight from the trenches.
For readers of The Queenslander trying to make sense of an increasingly extreme and polarised world, Angertainment serves as the ultimate decoder ring. Coper dissects how “rage bait”—rightly dubbed the 2025 Word of the Year—is actively rewiring our brains, influencing our votes, and tearing communities apart. He hilariously unmasks the bad actors, from manosphere grifters to political demagogues and tech oligarchs, who have realised that “in the modern attention economy, your anger is the only currency that matters.”
Yet, for all its terrifying urgency, the book is incredibly engaging. It is darkly funny, razor-sharp, and remarkably empathetic. Coper doesn’t just leave us despairing at the wreckage of our social media feeds; the final sections of the book serve as a definitive, empowering survival manual for dismantling the outrage machine and reclaiming our shared humanity.
I cannot recommend this book strongly enough. It should be mandatory reading for every single person who owns a smartphone or logs onto the internet. Stop what you are doing, visit your local bookshop or the official website, and buy a copy—buy one for yourself, and buy another for anyone you care about. It is an absolute triumph, and it might just be the most profoundly eye-opening investment you ever make.
Audiobook Preview: Angertainment by Ed Coper
Listening to the author narrate the introduction in this audio snippet provides a compelling taste of the book’s urgent, sharply funny, and highly accessible insights into the digital outrage economy.
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