Hour 2 - Red Meat

Arch Manning, the 22-year-old Texas quarterback and presumed golden boy of college football, laughed at an AI-generated video. That is all he did. The video depicted his head coach, Steve Sarkisian, blowing off a sideline reporter after a comeback win over Ohio State. Manning called the video “a good one” and said it was “hilarious.” Some reporters in the room chuckled along with him. Within hours, a segment of the sports media and online commenters demanded an apology. The University of Texas, the argument went, had a problem. Ben Maller, host of The Ben Maller Show, took this as his opening to diagnose a broader sickness in sports culture: the rise of performative outrage, the moral outrage industrial complex, and the way the internet has given loud, thin-skinned people a megaphone to police the behavior of a college kid who committed the crime of finding something funny.

The Manufactured Outrage Machine

The core of Maller’s argument is that the outrage over Arch Manning’s laugh is not genuine. It is manufactured, performative, and selective. “There are people that make their living being outraged by things,” he says. “And of course, it's always selective outrage. And these people auditioning to be the most offended person online. It's a urinating match. I'm more offended than you.”