It seems every few months, like clockwork, a controversy bubbles up in the theater-sphere. The latest: Maybe Happy Ending’s casting choice.
Within hours: statements, screenshots, signatures. What starts as a spark balloons into a referendum on identity, justice, and who we are as an industry.
And while it’s certainly true that friction and “drama” exist in every business, it seems show business (especially theater) tends to get very hot, very fast. But why?
That’s what hooked me. I kept circling the same questions:
Why do bandwagons form so quickly?
Why do the stakes feel so high?
How does social media affect our reactions?
Trust me: I know these things are delicate. I’m not here to name villains or heroes. I want to zoom out—to pull back the curtain and see how the machine works. Because if we can trace the pattern, maybe we can stop getting trapped inside it.
The Science of Outrage and Belonging
I didn’t set out to “solve” this specific story or litigate a particular issue. I wanted to understand the bigger picture. So I started digging, reading, watching—and what became clear was this: bandwagons scratch two basic itches: belonging and certainty.
Belonging first. When something flares, we look for our people. Public stance-taking doubles as a roll call—“I’m here, I’m with you.” In a field where work and identity blur, that hits deep. Silence reads as distance; agreement reads as care. A post becomes a badge, a signal to friends, collaborators, future employers: I share your values. Even if we haven’t read everything yet, we’ve read the room.
Then certainty. Ambiguity is uncomfortable, and the internet punishes slow thinking. So we compress. Complicated stories get flattened into headlines we can pass along without stopping the scroll. Moral language becomes a shorthand: harm, justice, betrayal, repair. It tells people not just what happened, but what it means—and where they “should” stand.
But as I dug into it, I realized it’s not just ideals at play—it’s status. Public moral-talk isn’t only about expression; it’s about reputation inside a tribe. We’re performers, performing. Naturally, we want to be seen and heard. So the takes get sharper, louder, and more certain.
Add thresholds: why nothing happens, until suddenly everything happens. A post goes big and turns the issue into common knowledge—not just that something happened, but everyone knows everyone knows. At that point, staying quiet feels like taking a side.
And yes, it feels good. Outrage isn’t only anger; it’s energy. It gives us agency when a situation is out of our control. It bonds us to others.
None of this makes the underlying issues less real. It just explains why the reaction arrives so fast and so hot. And to no surprise, social media acts like fuel to the flames.
How Feeds Feed the Fire
So I kept following the thread, and it turns out this isn’t just human nature; it’s product design.
Platforms reward posts that spark emotion. Outrage, betrayal, justice, harm. Those words travel farther, faster. The algorithm isn’t trying to be fair; it’s trying to keep us hooked.
Then there’s context collapse. In real life, you’d hopefully ask questions, go deeper, and attempt to find common ground. Online, nuance is inconvenient. It gets shaved off in favor of something we can read in under ten seconds.
Shareability is another tax. Carousels, captions, and 30-second clips force complicated stories into punchlines and binaries. If it doesn’t fit in one post, it might as well not exist. And corrections and clarifications never catch up. The sequel rarely outruns the original.
Put together, the feed stacks the deck for speed, certainty, and moral heat. Not because our community is broken, but because the systems and platforms are preying on our subconscious…subconsciouses…subsconsci?
Putting the “Drama” in Drama Club
My mom coined a phrase when I was in college: There’s always drama at the drama school. The sentiment is hilarious, sure—but the concept has some legs. Why does our community flock to flames? If our “dramatic” disposition is to blame, what is the real root of that?
For a lot of us, this isn’t just a job; it’s who we are. Theater sits at the precarious crossroads of identity and work. When vocation is fused to self, it’s easier to be blinded by the fog of our feelings. If notes and critiques feel personal, just imagine what someone with a different “moral stance” will spin up in us.
Make no mistake, our emotional availability serves us as artists and creatives—but it’s also combustible. We’re quick to cancel, and tough to sway. Once we believe something, it’s hard to break us out of that box.
Which explains why, for a community that prides itself on its queer Pride, these issues tend to drive us (counterintuitively) back into binary thinking almost instantly. Right and wrong become blatantly obvious…right?
We carry a communal moral self-image: empathetic, progressive, vocal. Those are real values, and they come with strong norms about how “our people” are expected to see things. The upside is, often, a clear line in the sand on where “we all” stand. The downside is a lack of perspectives—or even the ability to see that there might be other POVs.
Our networks are dense and overlapping. Everyone is two hops from everyone. Artists, marketers, press, producers, fans, educators—we share the same rooms and the same feeds. Information moves fast, and rumor fills any gap it can find.
On top of it, we’re trained communicators. We project. We persuade. We know how to turn a feeling into a line that lands. That’s a superpower onstage—and a megaphone during a flare-up.
All of this adds up to quite a substantial pile of kindling (if we’re sticking with our fire metaphor).
The Payout and The Cost
To be clear, outrage isn’t just noise; it does work. It surfaces invisible harms. It creates pressure where politeness has stalled. It gives dispersed people a way to act together, and sometimes that collective push makes real change. The heat can be righteous.
But there’s also a burn rate. Binary scripts flatten messy truths into hero/villain arcs. Fast certainty punishes context and makes course-correction feel like a betrayal or reversal.
And there’s a reputational chill—people who might add detail or admit nuance go quiet because the social cost of chiming in is higher than the reward for accuracy.
Collateral damage is real, too: social media teams, assistants, associates, and a litany of innocent bystanders get caught in the crossfire of choices they didn’t personally make.
All of this can be true. Our anger, frustration, and fight can be a riptide for good, and the waves we make can cause harm. And they don’t cancel each other out—quite the opposite: they make the nuance richer.
All the World’s a Stage
Good news: it’s not just us. Politics, sports, business—anywhere identity meets attention, the same cycle repeats. Theater just gives us a closer view, because our networks are tighter and our values more openly declared. We’re not the exception; we’re the magnifying glass. A micro of the macro.
Maybe that’s not all bad. The noise, the heat, the sudden flare of certainty—these aren’t signs of a broken community so much as signs of a living one. The fact that we care enough to rally, argue, demand, and declare—that’s progress compared to silence.
Is it messy? Hell yeah. But so is rehearsal. So is collaboration. So is art. So is life.
The mess is the method—and often the only way real change gets made.
So let’s keep at it and be mindful of the embers we leave behind.
One Last Thing
This week, I came down with COVID. Yes—she’s back.
I’m in Arizona visiting family, hoping to spend time with my brand-new nephew, and instead I’ve been quarantining. It’s frustrating. And exhausting.
But in some ways, not surprising. I spent six straight months rehearsing and performing without a break, my body holding out against every cough and sniffle. Then the shows ended, and so did my defenses. It’s a pattern performers know well: the moment you stop, the sickness sneaks in.
So I’ve let myself binge some long-overdue TV, and I finally moved The Fourth Wall to Substack—a shift I’ve been circling for months. On paper, it’s simple. But in practice, it felt bigger. Change, however small, has a way of sounding internal alarms. It can feel like momentum breaking, like something delicate slipping through your fingers.
What I realized, in the noise and haze of nose-blowing and fear, is that pauses aren’t breaks in the story. They’re part of it. The doubt, the fight-or-flight, the brain that spins narratives about who I am and what I make—that’s all real. But so is the other truth: that I’m more than those stories. That following a hunch, even a small one, is part of the larger experiment of being alive.
And if that sounds existential, blame the brain fog—or the fact that I’m re-reading The Four Agreements.
Either way, I am getting better. And soon, I’ll get to hold a baby whose awe and innocence are reminders of something I want to return to myself. Maybe that’s the quiet gift of a pause: it hands you back your wonder.
As always, thanks for being here.
See you next week ♥️
—Matt