Meet the Conflict Entrepreneurs. They’re Fucking All of Us.
Social media runs on conflict. This isn’t exactly breaking news — but what’s worth thinking about is how this has spawned an entire class of what we might call “professional conflict entrepreneurs” and their cousins, the “trauma grifters.” These are the folks who have figured out how to monetize and weaponize both interpersonal drama and personal suffering.
Let’s be precise about what we’re talking about here. A conflict entrepreneur is someone who deliberately manufactures, amplifies, or prolongs online conflicts for personal gain — whether that’s followers, Substack subscriptions, Patreon dollars, or pure social capital. A trauma grifter is someone who weaponizes either real or embellished personal trauma narratives to gain authority in online spaces and often monetary support.
The problem isn’t that these people exist. Snake oil salesmen and rabble rousers always have.
The problem is that they’ve become load-bearing pillars of our online discourse.
When your business model depends on conflict or trauma narratives, you have a strong incentive to find more of both — or manufacture them when supply runs low.
Consider the mechanics: A conflict entrepreneur spots (or creates) a brewing disagreement between two parties. They quote-tweet one side with an inflammatory take. Their followers pile on. The other side responds. Now we have a proper “discourse.” The entrepreneur’s engagement metrics spike. They start a Substack newsletter to “cover the controversy.” They launch a Patreon to “continue this important work.” They position themselves as brave truth-tellers speaking truth to power.
The trauma grifter’s playbook runs parallel: They share a personal story of trauma or oppression (which may be entirely real). They position themselves as uniquely qualified to speak on related issues because of this experience. They begin selling courses on “healing.” They start charging for “consulting” on how organizations can avoid causing similar trauma. They build a brand around their survivor status.
Both types have mastered what we might call the “engagement ratchet.” Every interaction must escalate. Every response must be more inflammatory than the last. Every story must be more shocking. The algorithm rewards it, and their business model demands it.
The incentives here are perfectly aligned to produce exactly what we see: an endless stream of increasingly heated conflicts and increasingly extreme trauma narratives. Fuck resolution or healing — it’s about maintaining the narrative tension that keeps followers engaged and revenue flowing.
These people shape our broader discourse. They set the tone and terms of debate. They decide which conflicts get amplified and which get ignored. They determine which traumas are culturally valuable and which aren’t worth discussing.
And they’re also incredibly effective at capturing institutional attention. Organizations, terrified of being labeled as being on the “wrong side” of a conflict, repeatedly cave to their demands. This gives the entrepreneurs even more power and influence, which they can monetize further.
The solution isn’t to dismiss all online conflict or discount all trauma narratives. Both are real and important. The solution is to stop rewarding people who deliberately manufacture and amplify conflict for profit. To stop treating trauma as a form of currency that can be traded for authority and influence.
We need to develop better pattern recognition. Watch for people who always seem to be at the center of drama but never seem to resolve anything. Notice who profits from prolonging conflicts rather than solving them. Pay attention to who builds their entire brand around their trauma narrative while selling solutions to others.
Having 100,000 followers and a fucked up life doesn’t make someone an expert on anything. Being good at starting X fights doesn’t qualify someone to speak on complex social issues. Or biology. Or nuclear armament. Or fluoridation. Etc.
The harder part is addressing the underlying incentives. As long as conflict and trauma narratives drive engagement, there will be entrepreneurs ready to supply them. As long as we reward people for finding new ways to be publicly aggrieved, they’ll keep doing it.
The best we can do is to consciously withdraw our attention — and our money — from people who profit from keeping us angry and afraid. To support voices that seek to clarify rather than inflame, to heal rather than monetize harm.
This isn’t tone policing. The fact is, some people have built business models that depend on making our online spaces more toxic, our conversations more confrontational, and our trauma more extreme. And it’s up to us to decide that maybe — just maybe — we don’t need to keep funding it.
The internet is already contentious enough without professional conflict entrepreneurs stirring the pot for profit. Our collective mental health is already challenging enough without trauma being transformed into a business model.
It’s time to stop feeding the machine. And subscribing to its substack.
