Why do you need to invent online outrage?

It’s another thing to crave outrage so desperately that you project it onto others.

Take, for example, the courageous defenders of The Little Mermaid. Disney recently cast Halle Bailey in the iconic role, and the news was quickly swallowed by “controversy.” Social justice warriors were so ready to battle the racists who would protest the casting of a black woman as a previously white character that when a single tweet gave them the ammo they were looking for, they pounced.

“Us white girls, who grew up with The Little Mermaid, deserved a true-to-color Ariel. Disney, you made a huge mistake by hiring Halle Bailey. This is going in the TRASH,” the ungrammatical tweet read. The post, however, appears to be fake.

BuzzFeed News curation editor Brandon Wall reported that the account’s profile picture, the photo used in the tweet, and another photo posted by the account were all stolen from other sources. Twitter has since suspended the account.

#NotMyAriel began trending on Twitter, but it seems this happened because everyone found it necessary to personally defend the casting decision.

This has all been public knowledge since last week. But the story was too good, and so the major media has run with the fake outrage story. New Lion King star Donald Glover and original Ariel actress Jodi Benson each weighed in, while Disney’s Freeform “claps back at Halle Bailey’s trolls.” The Washington Post ran a video warning, “Halle Bailey’s casting as Ariel met with mixed reviews.”

But the reviews aren’t really mixed if they’re overwhelmingly positive, with a few trolls and one viral fake troll making the bad arguments. Don’t let those pesky facts deter your conclusions, though. As recently as Wednesday, Fortune ran the headline, “Fear of a Black Mermaid.”

Is this what we really want? Do we so desperately crave a world in which it’s still controversial to give a starring role to a woman of color that we have to embolden a “backlash” that doesn’t exist? We do diversity and representation no favors by pretending they’re still contentious topics.

Of course, there are still people who get upset about similar issues, and there are still the couple of hundred or so people who appeared to get upset about Bailey’s casting. Their worlds must be very small and sad. But most of us inhabit an America that is much more inclusive than it was in the past, and if we pretend otherwise without reason, we take a step back.

Nevertheless, the fake outrage keeps growing. On a less viral scale, the website Queerty tweeted out an article on Tuesday with the caption, “Trump fans adopted soccer star Kelley O’Hara as their hero. Then they watched this kiss.”

Pundits on the Right had praised O’Hara after she picked up a dropped American flag from the soccer field. Queerty wanted to rub something in those smug right-wing faces, though, so without citing any actual outrage, the article read, “Republican pundits eager to praise Women’s World Cup soccer star Kelley O’Hara received a rude awakening when cameras caught her smooching her girlfriend in the stands.”

Unfortunately, for Queerty’s narrative, no one cared. And unfortunately for the narrative that you can’t cast a black woman in a white role in 2019 without braving the hatred of internet trolls, you can. Just don’t trust most of the media to be honest about it.