The Cruelty Market

Professional wrestling has a term for it: heel heat.

It’s when a performer does whatever it takes to make the audience hate them. They’ll mock the local sports team. Insult the crowd. Break the rules when the referee isn’t looking.

The better they are at being despised, the more valuable they become.

Sound familiar?

We’re watching an entire political movement transform itself into a heel factory. But instead of wrestling rings, they’re doing it in state houses. On cable news. In Congress.

The product? Performative cruelty.

The business model is elegant in its simplicity: Find someone your base already dislikes. Attack them. Make it personal. Make it cruel. Make it loud. Then monetize the outrage — both from your supporters who love the show and your opponents who can’t look away.

The ROI is spectacular. Every cruel joke becomes a fundraising opportunity. Every manufactured controversy drives engagement. Every attack on the vulnerable becomes proof of “authenticity.”

It’s the perfect grift for the algorithm age.

Because here’s what they figured out: In a world of infinite content, being consistently cruel is a differentiator. It cuts through the noise. It guarantees attention. And attention, in today’s economy, is everything.

So they’ve built a perpetual motion machine of meanness. A systematic approach to destroying empathy and calling it strength. A way to transform basic human decency into a sign of weakness.

The innovation isn’t the cruelty itself — that’s as old as politics. The innovation is in the packaging.

They’ve turned cruelty into a product.

Spite into a subscription service.

Hatred into a growth hack.

And business is booming.

Every time you think they’ve hit bottom, they find a new depth to explore. A new group to target. A new line to cross.

Because in their market, there is no bottom. There’s only the next quarterly report. The next fundraising deadline. The next election cycle.

They’re not public servants anymore. They’re engagement entrepreneurs. Cruelty consultants. Hate influencers.

And like any good market player, they’re just giving their customers what they want.

I’m not here to debate whether this business model works.

I’m here to ask what it’s doing to us.

Because markets don’t just respond to demand — they create it. They shape behavior. They transform culture.

And this one’s transforming us into something we may not be able to come back from.

Unless we decide to stop buying what they’re selling.