When I look at the kinds of articles people post on social media and the comments under them, it feels like there’s an overwhelming amount of hate and anger in the world - or at least among the people posting and commenting. (Maybe it’s just that non-angry people don’t spend much time in this kind of spaces.)
In contrast, when I think about my own life, I realize that I’m almost never angry. I feel many other negative emotions, sure, but anger isn’t one of them, and even when it arises it’s usually quite short-lived. I can’t even name a single person I hate - neither in my personal life nor in the media. I simply don’t spend time dwelling on people I’m not interested in or being angry at the world for not meeting my expectations.
This makes me wonder: is my experience rare or unusual? Or is hate and anger simply overrepresented in the media because those emotions motivate people to engage, making them seem far more widespread than they actually are?
I’m trying to understand rather than criticize. I can’t take credit for not being angry because whatever tha skill is doesn’t translate into other things like anxiety. I’m anxious about equally trivial things and I can’t help myself. I guess I’m just glad I don’t need to deal with this constant anger too.
I believe that our media are actively stoking outrage and shock.
People have a built-in tendency to pay more attention to danger than opportunity: if you fail to notice some berries on a bush you won’t necessarily die but if you fail to notice a scorpion on the path you may very well die. So people react strongly to negative information.
This strong reaction registers as “engagement” and media think they must be offering info that people want. In the digital age, engagement can be counted and tracked, which allows you to quickly adapt and do more of whatever creates that engagement.
We’ve been experiencing that optimization loop for the last 20 years and it is now at a deafening roar. We don’t have problems in the world, we have existential crises. We don’t have political disagreements, we have mortal enemies. We don’t have a venal buffoon for a president, we have a fascist dictator murdering rapist psychopath.
This isn’t the only factor but it is significant and it is also new. Yes, there has been sensationalism in the last but it is new to be able to track media consumption like this and adapt on the fly, automatically. It’s taken us to a whole new level.