What Is Doomscrolling?
Doomscrolling is a new term coined during the coronavirus pandemic for the old habit of mindlessly scrolling through depressing news on your computer or phone for hours on end. Doomscollers are people obsessed with bad news and checking for bad news; anxiously scouring the internet and media for the latest and greatest threat to all life as we know it.
Doomscrolling More Popular Than Ever
To encourage their demented fascination with morbidity, headlines scream: “Medical Professionals Helpless”, “Death Counts Rise”, and “The Worst is Yet To Come”, and the more media manure that people consume, the more emotionally disturbed they become. Always quick to take horrific advantage of any all all misfortune and exploit their love of sensationalism, irresponsible journalists have been doing their best to spread rumors and innuendos, misinformation and biased slants to induce ever greater paranoia for a very long time, because scary sells even better than sexy. The propagandist pukes despicable and irresponsible conduct is both destroying the fabric of society and causing the collapse of private business and the entire middle class.
The End Is Nigh!
Now I reckon that ‘doomscrolling’ by conspiracy fans was happening long before Coronavirus ever came along, as throughout all of time there have always been those scouring through tablets and scrolls to find reasons to publicly cry, “The end is nigh!” And just like the doomsayers and viruses of yesteryear, the hype and hysteria that’s trending today will be forgotten tomorrow as new, even more terrible threat is created, or occurs. Unfortunately, what remains after each is emotional suffering and social scars.
Preoccupation With Impending Disaster
I get why people are doomscrolling, and why humans have a preoccupation with impending disaster. They do it because they should, as there are literally millions of ways that we can meet our demise at anytime. However, when we get to running from the mouth of one monster so darn fast that we unwittingly run right into the mouth of a much bigger and more horrific monster, as we have today, our behavior goes from being rational to being irrational.
Mad Man Disease
So, today instead of trying to cope with ‘mad cow’ disease, we now cope with ‘mad man’ disease as humankind continues to delightedly doomscroll from one drama/trauma to the next.
