The Headlines are Bleak, Aren't They?
Doomscrolling is the shittiest part of my job
I was trying to decide what I wanted to write about this morning after my shower.
I sat down with my breakfast and my coffee, wet hair hanging over my shoulder in my PJs — I don’t work until this afternoon, sue me — and I opened up the news to start scanning.
I was looking for inspiration. Something that would spark my brain into commentary. But all I saw was bad news. Too much bad news. Like, an overwhelming amount of bad news.
I caught myself doomscrolling before I even realized what was up. My blood pressure is probably through the roof right now, and the coffee really isn’t helping.
There are multiple major wars around the globe, many of them spilling out into neighbouring territories as the conflict deepens. Some of them aren’t even really in the news — I’ll point to South Sudan once again.
We have outbreaks of disease being ramped to the headlines again, with panic starting to set in about the possibility of a new pandemic, even deadlier than COVID.
Experts are once again trying to remind us that Hantavirus does not spread anywhere near as easily as COVID-19, but that isn’t stopping people from spiralling. Especially because those expert opinions aren’t making the front page.
As we talked about before, people are traumatised. I saw a healthcare professional online saying that if it happens again, he won’t be a ‘healthcare hero’ this time; he’ll just quit on the spot.
To him, it’s not worth the stress. Whether it’s the stress of risking his life and watching people die horribly, like during COVID, or the stress of being harassed by the anti-science, anti-vaxxer crowd for trying to save lives.
I don’t blame him. That shit is insane to me.
Regardless, there’s bad news literally everywhere right now, and my brain almost short-circuited in the ten minutes I spent scrolling while I munched on my leftover pasta salad.
This is part of the problem of our modern media ecosystem. Fear sells. Legitimate journalism is harder to come by for many reasons, not least of which is the profit motive.
Panic drives clicks, and clicks make money.
You’re not going to find many proper investigative journalists with integrity in major news organizations anymore, because they’re being edited and screened to hell and back over fear of putting a toe wrong and offending someone with the power to deny access.
You find them in independent news media. Some journalists, utterly fed up with the whole system, have flocked to blogs and newsletters like here on Substack, trying to do their jobs without the backing of editors and fact checkers.
They’re heroes, but that’s a hard job.
And for the record, I am not one of those people. I’ve had someone call me a journalist before, and I have to shut that shit down. I am not a journalist.
I am an opinion piece writer, a mouthy rando on the internet with a lot to say and a lot of anger at injustice. I’m not giving you journalism; I’m giving you my opinions based on the information journalists, scientists and politicians are providing.
It’s hard to know where to turn for that information with shit like this screed of negative headlines everywhere you turn.
And that is part of the point. A flooding of the zone, if you will. A firehose of bad news to keep us mired in despair serves authoritarian governments well, and if you’ll notice, a lot of these major news organizations have been bought up by that authoritarian’s friends.
So, be wary of where you get your news. Because there are people with a vested interest in keeping you restrained with hopelessness and depression, so you don’t fight back.
They want you tired, ignorant, hopeless and apathetic.
We may be World-Weary, but we can’t give in. Y’all with me on this?
Solidarity wins.