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Negativity drives online news consumption

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Re: Negativity drives online news consumption

#101

Post by MisterBastahrd »

gwbrooks wrote: post #10

Former newspaper city editor here. With few exceptions, positive stories -- although readers clamored for them in surveys -- never drove newsrack sales the way negative stories did. That's why we had a whole section for feel-good features but they didn't usually get prime front-page real estate. In the age of infinite content, headlines have become a sort of drama arms race. But the basic dynamic of what works and wh…

Spectacles drive the news. It's easier to frame a negative issue as a spectacle than a positive. Say you have a local festival. That's supposed to happen. There's no news there except for the time and date the festival is open, and any new or interesting things can be found by going there. Car drives into a festival and runs over some people? Wow, unexpected. Might wanna read about that and get the details.

But if your local high school football team wins a state title? You'll sell that paper out. Local refinery explodes? Likewise.

Re: Negativity drives online news consumption

#102

Post by gwbrooks »

KoftaBob wrote: post #83
gwbrooks wrote: post #10

Former newspaper city editor here. With few exceptions, positive stories -- although readers clamored for them in surveys -- never drove newsrack sales the way negative stories did. That's why we had a whole section for feel-good features but they didn't usually get prime front-page real estate. In the age of infinite content, headlines have become a sort of drama arms race. But the basic dynamic of what works and wh…

What got me to break out of this habit is realizing that the vast majority of what news sites/tv report on isn't remotely actionable or relevant for the average viewer. It's basically something that scratches the itch of human curiosity, but with manipulative and lowest common denominator garbage. We'd all be better off if we scratched that curiosity itch by reading about things we're interested in, rather than curre…

^^^ This right here.

Most daily-or-faster reporting is so shallow that consuming the information may, at times, be a net-negative to your understanding of whatever issue they're reporting about.

Re: Negativity drives online news consumption

#103

Post by thrown123098 »

olliecornelia wrote: post #3
numbers_guy wrote: post #2

Maybe it is because happy people do not consume the news? Happy people tend to have full lives and are therefore too busy to waste time ingesting news about events that are not going to personally affect them. Whereas, I can only speak for myself, but when I am down (like right now), I spend lots of time doing nothing but browsing news aggregator websites and leaving comments like this one. And of course, negative ne…

Some people are hoping for a catastrophe that will render all their personal problems irrelevant, be it World War III, environmental disasters or societal collapse. Like a snow day for your whole life.

We had that. It was called Covid. Two years later we are still dealing with the first phase of the completely predictable results rolling lock downs caused. In another 5 we will start dealing with the unpredictable ones.

Here's hoping that we're wise enough to not let reddit admits dictate world health policy again.

Re: Negativity drives online news consumption

#104

Post by rightbyte »

themitigating wrote: post #53
Gare wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, we are primed as animals that we are to be scared and vigilant. Because that ensured survival.

I watched a farewell video of a very far right person dying of Covid. He didn't get vaccinated but I don't know if it was because he was anti-vax, didn't think Covid was real or didn't get a chance as this was early in the pandemic. It was a recording made from a hospital bed and uploaded to Facebook. As he was saying his goodbyes he said something like "...and tell Brandon (son) I love him, not to trust anyone, and…

> "and no one will ever help you in life"

Strange thing to say in a hospital bed? Also, if the doctors know you are dying of Covid you can hardly talk right? Seems fishy.

Re: Negativity drives online news consumption

#105

Post by Karrot_Kream »

glomgril wrote: post #97
npunt wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agree, the pandemic didn't hit the way I expected and I've heard many with similar experiences. This type of response (generally speaking, not necessarily you) may for some be driven by hypervigilance, as one of the ways it manifests is a level of calm in emergencies when others are freaking out. Rather paradoxical on the surface, but has to do with adaptation to certain stress levels and threat/friend response. The…

Yeah that is consistent with my experience for sure. Probably true for lots of others too. I'm pretty neurotic about dumb shit on a day-to-day basis, but the few times something actually extremely serious has gone wrong in/around my life, it's rarely felt particularly scary or panic-inducing -- maybe even less so than the usual "oh my god I probably left the stove on and the building will burn to the ground and it'll…

This is a pretty common behavior for folks with anxiety related disorders, obviously closely tied with neurotic behavior. For me, there's nothing like the clarity of an all-out disaster to focus and sober me up.

Re: Negativity drives online news consumption

#106

Post by sammalloy »

initramfs wrote: post #71
themitigating wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I watched a farewell video of a very far right person dying of Covid. He didn't get vaccinated but I don't know if it was because he was anti-vax, didn't think Covid was real or didn't get a chance as this was early in the pandemic. It was a recording made from a hospital bed and uploaded to Facebook. As he was saying his goodbyes he said something like "...and tell Brandon (son) I love him, not to trust anyone, and…

hah, the person below you did a nice imitation. They forgot "Assuming the daughter" not son. But more seriously, the reason people indoctrinate isn't because they want them to be negative, but to realize that being pessimistic is actually going to be a more reliable way to have a plan for life when no one is able to help. For example, if your car breaks down and your cell phone battery is around 30%- you have time to…

> the reason people indoctrinate isn't because they want them to be negative, but to realize that being pessimistic is actually going to be a more reliable way to have a plan for life when no one is able to help

I take it you are a conservative. This is a perennial city people (liberal) versus rural folk (conservative) discussion that will never have a resolution.

Liberals generally don’t believe in the idea that "no one is able to help" because they live in larger urban populations that see the government as beneficial.

Conservatives tended to live in more rural areas where there weren’t as many people to help them, and they couldn’t depend on the government.

Re: Negativity drives online news consumption

#108

Post by bilbo0s »

luckylion wrote: post #91
dsfyu404ed wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course everyone loses to an extent in a collapse but power is relative. And short of a meteor collapses are usually partial (e.g. the roman empire fell but the church remained and consolidated power). You can only paint with a broad brush but it's not exactly hard to pick out groups that will be net recipients of relative power and wealth in various collapse scenarios. If the financial system collapses people who…

In my experience, it's not those that are likely to be better off after a catastrophe who are looking for it. They are already pretty well off, they have a lot to lose in chaos. Those who don't have a lot to lose are more interested in a chaotic phase that rolls the dice and will quickly reshuffle the social order. The rich are moving into gated communities, they're not looking forward to living in a mad max world --…

In fairness, there's no such thing as a mad max world. At least not one without the rich. A mad max world is predicated on companies like Halliburton continuing to keep the fossil fuel deliveries coming. Which, in turn, is predicated on keeping refineries maintained and running. Keeping pipelines secure. And keeping roads repaired. All of which imply a very large number of wealthy people. (Assuming even state or regional scale energy logistics.)

To get mad max, we have to have alternative energy production and storage be cheap enough for broke people to afford. Even then, they'd need to be able to afford enough of that energy that they can spend huge amounts of it riding around looking for other people to steal from rather than spending the energy on farming and heating their homes. Raiding might work for post apocalyptic populations in Florida or South Carolina. I imagine the climate might be conducive to that sort of thing. But in a world with no energy deliveries, spending what little energy you have so frivolously would quickly doom you and your family if you live in Minnesota, Illinois, or Wisconsin for instance.

Re: Negativity drives online news consumption

#109

Post by [deleted] »

numbers_guy wrote: post #2

Maybe it is because happy people do not consume the news? Happy people tend to have full lives and are therefore too busy to waste time ingesting news about events that are not going to personally affect them. Whereas, I can only speak for myself, but when I am down (like right now), I spend lots of time doing nothing but browsing news aggregator websites and leaving comments like this one. And of course, negative ne…

[deleted]

Re: Negativity drives online news consumption

#110

Post by nottathrowaway3 »

DeathArrow wrote: post #58

It's in the human nature. People are more worried about what can affect them in a negative way than are they content about good things. Maybe it's the survival instinct that triggers with bad news, maybe people consider the good news to be normal. I try to click less on negative stories and more on positive stories. Negative things can make me angry or sad and I dislike being angry or sad. Also I find many negative n…

> I try to click less on negative stories and more on positive stories.

An alternative approach is to consume news from multiple countries (including your own). It's so interesting to see how all the fnords are different and just how conditioned you were to consume the one kind of media designed for your country.

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