Doomscrolling

Chapter 347

Doomscrolling 

This is what passes for news and entertainment these days. My wife has been doing this with the Coronavirus pandemic. Every day she reports to me and my dad what terrible statistics are taking shape in the world. My dad watches the “news” each evening - essentially a highly concentrated toxic clip of every bad thing that has happened in the course of the last 24 hours for all 8 billion people in the world. This is doomscrolling. 

It is facebook, where you can see every conspiracy theory the mind can concoct, and then you follow the links to their “facts” and this too is doomscrolling. It is twitter and Instagram and any other place online where people with too much time on their hands sit and fester.

It is the advertisement last night during the “news” where Donald Trump was playing on your every fear so that you don’t defund the police. That one was particularly twisted, with the idea that the only thing holding back crime, are violent police with guns. This makes me laugh so hard, because London has been patrolled for years by police with no lethal weapons and they are reducing crime just fine. This is another form of doomscrolling.

Everything I have written here is negative. This is doomscrolling - its negative. It plays on your fears. It doesn’t produce anything positive. It doesn’t help you be more creative or inspired. In fact, it has no value whatsoever, even if it all were true, which it isn’t at all, you could do nothing to prevent what was coming, and “knowing” about it only makes it worse.

Quit this nonsense!