digital scapegoats and the ritual of outrage
back from the borderline
mollie adler
4.8 • 602 Ratings
🗓️ 18 November 2025
⏱️ 71 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
One single mistake online can set off a collective judgment that moves faster than thought itself. A name starts to trend and a crowd quickly forms around it. The event feels public, but it somehow reaches into private instinct. The pull to condemn and to belong. But most importantly, to feel clean or more pure through accusation.
In this episode, we’ll dig into exactly how outrage becomes a shared ritual of moral performance. We’ll dissect the psychology of projection and how quickly empathy seems to disappear once the harsh digital punishment begins. We’ll draw from thinkers like Carl Jung and René Girard to map this f*cked up hidden economy of attention that rewards cruelty while trying to convince everyone else that this is what justice actually looks like.
Together, we’ll discover what really happens when ancient sacrificial patterns are combined with deadly algorithmic speed. It asks us to confront the uncomfortable question facing us as a collective: how has a society supposedly obsessed with virtue ended up feeding on humiliation?
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Long-term listeners of this podcast know that I've spent the last five years talking about the dark. |
| 0:06.5 | Now I've built a flashlight, and it's called Moods. |
| 0:10.4 | It's an instrument for serious, private inner work designed to dismantle your excuses and never |
| 0:15.7 | inflate your ego or assume the role of a sycophantic companion. |
| 0:19.6 | And the wait list is finally live. |
| 0:21.7 | Access is granted in the exact order you sign up. |
| 0:24.9 | Lock in your spot now at moods.world. |
| 0:28.8 | Welcome to the new era of inner work. |
| 0:35.6 | Welcome to Back from the Borderline. |
| 0:37.9 | I'm your host, Molly, and I don't want to talk to your personality. |
| 0:42.1 | I want to talk to your soul. |
| 0:44.0 | This podcast is where we unravel toxic programming from dysfunctional family systems, societal scripts, and the mental health labels that have kept you small. |
| 0:53.1 | We talk about sovereignty, shadow work, |
| 0:56.0 | emotional alchemy, culture, AI, and everything that lives at the intersection of the soul and the |
| 1:01.8 | system. Back from the borderline means back from the edge, from the abyss, from the illusion that |
| 1:08.1 | you're too broken to heal. If that sounds like the kind of journey you're ready to take, |
| 1:13.0 | follow the podcast on the player you're listening to right now. |
| 1:16.2 | I drop new episodes every Tuesday. |
| 1:18.4 | All right, let's get into it. |
| 1:31.1 | I refresh my social media feed and there it is again. |
| 1:36.5 | Somebody else is getting completely torn apart on the internet today. |
| 1:46.9 | A new headline, a trending name, I don't know, maybe a public figure or an influencer or a politician is caught up in the latest misstep or misdeed. And as usual, I watch as comments are pouring in by the thousands |
... |
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