There is nothing more depressing than “positive news”
theoutline.com
theoutline.com
A new tech/drug/math/specie/dino bone is, to me, positive news. It don't need the reporter to scream "awesome" and add kittens when presenting it.
The problem is not positive news. It's that the US is becoming a parody of a 1960 sitcom, like in the excellent movie "Pleasantville", where everything is "fantastic".
Everybody is "so excited" about their new project, or "passionate" about their work. Their "best friend" is "amazing".
Everybody wants to hype up everything, and there is no more space for appreciating reality as it is. You can't say chicken wings are breath taking. What will be left to talk about your greatest achievements or the birth of you child ?
This is what depresses people.
Not positive news.
My perspective is that a large crowd of potential buyers must need the “researchers find the new drug results exiting” to actually make their transactions. Similar for a mindset of clicking on ads. The marketers would prefer ads on content making a person genuinely excited.
You can be excited about a new drug you created. But I don't know many adults that would feel 5yo-excitement about anything. They may be proud. They may feel happy. But genuine excitation is rare, not a ten times a week event, even if your life is great.
So they should keep "excited" for those rare occasions when they are, indeed, excited.
We don't communicate anymore. We do PR. PR is fake, fake is depressing.
It's like with sugar. We figured that adding a fake excitement to something sells it better. So we added it everywhere. And now we need enormous doses of it, nuances are lost and it's not healthy.
Even more so when people who don't adopt this communication style are shunned for being "negative".
On some level it is seen through as fake and dystopian - turning even being yourself into a luxury for the sake of delusion of others - either some high up who thinks it will aid metrics or the casual cruelty of a community who asks if you tried just not being depressed and clearly sees you as the "troublemaker" for not going along with their bullshit because you literally lack the motivation.
That's an interesting hypothesis, but is it true. There are actually two separate suggestions here:
1. Reality contains as many positives as negatives - possible, interesting philosophical assertion
2. Reality contains as many newsworthy positives as negatives - seems unlikely to me. No-one is really that interested in 'Kitten doesn't die, continues living as normal'.
If you look for good news, you'll find it. And you'll end up... thinking better of people.
Just like news news.
Just because you have a terrible attitude on life composed of torturing yourself with extreme mischaracterizations of reality and denying yourself any reprieve, doesn't mean you have a firmer grasp on reality. If you can't handle the status quo, you have an illness.
It's one thing to live in a little bubble where you don't need to confront what's wrong in the world; it's another to avoid getting dragged into the culture war by a torrent of stories framed entirely to embitter.
> Yes, there are immigrant children in concentration camps on American soil...
No, the U.S. government isn't reoriented toward a goal of "gassing the kids". You need to take a chill pill.
You seem to have no trouble criticizing "positive news", and sure, some of it is just as delusional; but don't kid yourself and think for one second that it's any more insidious than your favourite extreme rage-bait nonsense, fueled by the far-stronger sharing impulse for angry news.
Granted, we need the "bad news" too, as certain things still need fixing. However living with a negative impression of the world is living in denial.
The current US refugee camps may qualify, because the point is to end the previous policy of letting them free until their hearings - thus, concentration in the classic sense. On the other hand, there is a legitimate legal process for getting out eventually; in that sense they're more like ordinary prisons.
Anyway, take your own chill pill first.