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Earlier quoted context omitted.
It makes sense at a surface level, if you ignore negative information it could potentially lead to negative outcomes for yourself. If you ignore positive news, what's the worst that could happen if you're caught unawares? Something positive or at least personally benign?
Yes, we are primed as animals that we are to be scared and vigilant. Because that ensured survival.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It makes sense at a surface level, if you ignore negative information it could potentially lead to negative outcomes for yourself. If you ignore positive news, what's the worst that could happen if you're caught unawares? Something positive or at least personally benign?
Yes, we are primed as animals that we are to be scared and vigilant. Because that ensured survival.
Like OOP said, that was a surface level thought. Finding evidence in evolutionary psychology seems like a big leap from that.
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…
Every state should have a similar paper.
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…
Do you think this is just how we're wired? What is so extremely disappointing to me is that, across many objective measures, many things seem to be improving, yet the perception most people have of reality is the complete opposite, thanks to this perverse incentive.
Online news (as well as cable news) in particular has taken to farming any kinds of changes to society as moral decay. Airing or printing only outrage is a business model unto its own. See: Huffpost, Breitbart for examples.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
This is a problem to fix, which society has not itself figured out yet. Hope, being good enough, your time is your time and desire mitigation is a solution. Productize and scale happiness
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Thank you, that's a great way to describe why I always check the news the moment I wake up.
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…
Trolls troll because they enjoy the stimulus that it provides. Perhaps there is some overlap with that and posting negative news? Prison Experiment meets Social Media (which weaponizes and amplifies). https://theconversation.com/new-research-shows-trolls-dont-j... (New research shows trolls don’t just enjoy hurting others, they also feel good about themselves)
And normal people love self-serving, simplistic, "just so" stories.