Is it just me?

[shiny!]

Is it just me, or is the world growing darker? Are journalists simply bringing horrors to our attention with better efficiency than ever before? The headlines on Drudge are so bad I can't bring myself to go there anymore. Lately they're trying with all their might to post extra-horrifying stories and put a doom-and-gloom twist on every headline. Just scanning the headlines feels like death from a thousand cuts.

Wardrums are beating ever louder... ISIS wants to bomb our cities! Kill every terrorist in the middle east, no matter what it takes! Wash, rinse, repeat...

Robin William's suicide hit me surprisingly hard. Plus the southern border problems, Russia/Ukraine, Israel/Gaza, Ferguson, Ebola...

I can't take it anymore. I've been a news junkie since I was five and first heard the word "Vietnam." For the first time in my life I find myself not wanting to know what's going on in the world. I'd actually rather mop my floors than read another headline. Hell has finally frozen over.

Is it just me?

[touchring]

Re: Is it just me?

Is it just me, or is the world growing darker? Are journalists simply bringing horrors to our attention with better efficiency than ever before? The headlines on Drudge are so bad I can't bring myself to go there anymore. Lately they're trying with all their might to post extra-horrifying stories and put a doom-and-gloom twist on every headline. Just scanning the headlines feels like death from a thousand cuts.


Violence begets violence. You can solve problems using bombs and missiles. The war against terror is a good example.

2014 is the turning point and marks the downturn of the Western civilization. Russia is right to pivot towards Asia.

Robin William's suicide hit me surprisingly hard. Plus the southern border problems, Russia/Ukraine, Israel/Gaza, Ferguson, Ebola...

I can't take it anymore. I've been a news junkie since I was five and first heard the word "Vietnam." For the first time in my life I find myself not wanting to know what's going on in the world. I'd actually rather mop my floors than read another headline. Hell has finally frozen over.

Is it just me?

Violence begets violence. You can't solve disputes using bombs and missiles. The lost war against terror is a good example. For every terrorist hunted down, another ten new ones appear.

2014 marks a turning point for the Western civilization. Russia is right to pivot towards Asia.

[touhy]

Re: Is it just me?

"For every terrorist hunted down, another ten new ones appear"


In that case why bother cutting my fingernails? They just grow back.

(Though I agree we need to fight terrorism in ways beyond military and police methods. We should go after the heart of whatever it is that makes radical islam appealing to young males. We need to make it uncool,.... to make chicks not "dig it" somehow. I suggest ridicule.

[pescamaaan]

Re: Is it just me?

IThe headlines on Drudge are so bad I can't bring myself to go there anymore. Lately they're trying with all their might to post extra-horrifying stories and put a doom-and-gloom twist on every headline. Just scanning the headlines feels like death from a thousand cuts.

drudge has been like that for a very long time - every time i visit the site it feels like the world is ending....again - it's been like that for yrs

remember, the news business is as much a ratings business as anything else. fear and doom generate clicks/views/ads etc. im not completely cynical, just feel the need to filter out a lot of the news-o-tainment

[GRG55]

Re: Is it just me?

Symptom of the "information (overload) age" shiny?

You need to go back and re-read this posting from the iTulip archive. Maybe it'll put things in a different perspective.
http://www.itulip.com/forums/showthr...e-You-a-Doomer

Remember, it's doom and gloom and negative news that sells papers. The latest car crash, the "coming market crash", the "next" housing crash, whatever. I don't own a television, and I have given up the habit from my youth of voraciously consuming newspapers. Being truly informed today requires a much higher degree of independent and critical thinking than ever before imo...and that starts with effective personal filters to condition and attenuate the endless barrage of incoming noise in order that one might discern the underlying signal.

[don]

Re: Is it just me?

Symptom of the "information (overload) age" shiny?

You need to go back and re-read this posting from the iTulip archive. Maybe it'll put things in a different perspective.
http://www.itulip.com/forums/showthr...e-You-a-Doomer

Remember, it's doom and gloom and negative news that sells papers. The latest car crash, the "coming market crash", the "next" housing crash, whatever. I don't own a television, and I have given up the habit from my youth of voraciously consuming newspapers. Being truly informed today requires a much higher degree of independent and critical thinking than ever before imo...and that starts with effective personal filters to condition and attenuate the endless barrage of incoming noise in order that one might discern the underlying signal.

Unless you're talking about real estate. Then the media is a 24/7 infomercial. Some find that uplifting

[shiny!]

Re: Is it just me?

Symptom of the "information (overload) age" shiny?

You need to go back and re-read this posting from the iTulip archive. Maybe it'll put things in a different perspective.
http://www.itulip.com/forums/showthr...e-You-a-Doomer

Remember, it's doom and gloom and negative news that sells papers. The latest car crash, the "coming market crash", the "next" housing crash, whatever. I don't own a television, and I have given up the habit from my youth of voraciously consuming newspapers. Being truly informed today requires a much higher degree of independent and critical thinking than ever before imo...and that starts with effective personal filters to condition and attenuate the endless barrage of incoming noise in order that one might discern the underlying signal.

You're absolutely right. Negativity is like a drug and people seem to crave ever larger doses just to feel normal. I'm not only sickened by the negative spin on news, which I know to be propaganda, I'm sickened by the society that voraciously, gleefully consumes that negativity like it's mother's milk. Or crack.

Unfortunately I've never had good personal filters. I can walk into an empty room, begin to feel anxious, then find out that an argument happened there a little while earlier. So for now I'm taking a sabbatical from all things sad and awful because it's getting to me. The world can stay sad and awful longer than I can stay sane.

[GRG55]

Re: Is it just me?

Unless you're talking about real estate. Then the media is a 24/7 infomercial. Some find that uplifting

Good point!

[charliebrown]

Re: Is it just me?

Andrew Weil, an alternative medicine person, in a book entitled spontaneous healing, suggested turning off the news for a month and see how you feel.
I believe that there have been studies of measured physiological changes by viewing violence. I no longer watch the TV news except for weather and
sports. I have to admit that I do read zero-cred, only because they talk about things that will never hit the mainstream media. Most of the time I only read the headlines on the front page. The postings are usually too vulgar for me to read. I do know in the early 20th century, there was a lot of violence in the streets. In 2012, the U.S. homicide rate hit a 50 year low.

https://www.google.com/search?q=homi...w=1232&bih=868

maybe it it the 24/7 media machine and lack of community that makes us not have a relief from the stress?

[lektrode]

Re: Is it just me?

Andrew Weil, an alternative medicine person, in a book entitled spontaneous healing, suggested turning off the news for a month and see how you feel.
I believe that there have been studies of measured physiological changes by viewing violence. I no longer watch the TV news except for weather and
sports.

and even THEN, its stultifying - mostly due to the every-5-min interruptions for car adverts...
(and segueing straight back to.... uhhh.... 'marriage' rights ...)

I have to admit that I do read zero-cred, only because they talk about things that will never hit the mainstream media. Most of the time I only read the headlines on the front page. The postings are usually too vulgar for me to read. I do know in the early 20th century, there was a lot of violence in the streets. In 2012, the U.S. homicide rate hit a 50 year low.

.....

define 'too vulgar'
and THEN there's the comments on the lamerstream media/newspaper websites (with the typical low-info/leftwing herd POV-cheerleaders out in full force - the only attenuation on this being the fact that THEIR BOY... uhhh.. i mean GUY and the rest of the limo-lib bankster-backer bunch has been in charge...)

maybe it it the 24/7 media machine and lack of community that makes us not have a relief from the stress?

dont spose thats why the pharma indexes have been krankin, eh? (or at least were, there for awhile...)

but - at least around here - there's some kinda 'community' (and the 1-liner-laffability index is off-the-charts, on a good day ;)

[touchring]

Re: Is it just me?

"For every terrorist hunted down, another ten new ones appear"


In that case why bother cutting my fingernails? They just grow back.

(Though I agree we need to fight terrorism in ways beyond military and police methods. We should go after the heart of whatever it is that makes radical islam appealing to young males. We need to make it uncool,.... to make chicks not "dig it" somehow. I suggest ridicule.

Sounds like ridicule but is the cold hard truth.

To solve the problem, we must examine the cause. I read that the UK sends the most foreign fighters to Syria, even more than larger countries where Muslims are the majority, so whatever the cause, it must be must evident in the UK.

My personal feeling is that the problems in the world today are caused by extreme capitalism and unrealistic expectations. Wealth and fame is never enough so a person in pursuit of material wealth can never be satisfied and will eventually either fall into depression or overwhelmed by anger.

[flintlock]

Re: Is it just me?

It's mostly information overload. The internet brings all the bad news directly to our attention, with amazing efficiency. Sites like Drudge do a particularly good job at sifting through the news and bringing us the most depressing and shocking news. He seems to revel in the bad news. To some degree its always been like this, they just didn't have Matt Drudge in the 1790s to fill us in on the horrors of the French Revolution. Imagine if the old homefront got the real scoop on WWII, with video. Drudge likes to post stories that point out crazy behavior, but crazy is not a recent phenomena. Perhaps people feel a little more free to act on their impulses today.

I find Drudge depressing at times but still check in from time to time. It does make for a quick glance at what is going on in the world.

I find the most disturbing news to be news that points out just how dysfunctional our political system is and how polarized the citizens are. That's the makings of major upheaval and upheaval is what will affect me most. Not whether or not some transgender kid gets kicked out of school.