One cannot help but notice the world largely revolves around reactionary headlines, black and white thinking, and an overall lack of ability to think for oneself, ask questions and be comfortable in ambiguity.
Ambiguity feels bad – it causes anxiety, spiralling racing thoughts, and a feeling of incompletion – all sworn enemies of the fast-paced, hedonistic, and individualistic consumerist modern society that craves assurance and has grown unable or unwilling to allow itself to be uncomfortable – and thus TRULY think – even for one minute.
Therefore the media does the thinking for us – it’s not google or AI, or even news outlets – it’s how people use them. But news outlets are profit oriented enterprises at the end of the day, and what better way of generating traffic and therefore revenue than to exploit the primordial factor that sparked the development of modern society – human emotion. Primarily, negative emotions, as it is well known negative emotions spread much faster and are thus more lucrative than positive ones. Negative news call for action, worry, indignation, hatred, fear, and adesire and need to share them and discuss these themes. Positive news do not call for anything – they simply represent assurance that everything is as it should be – worry free, peaceful, predictable. It pleases, but it does not generate engagement.
Humans need to BELONG. Need to know which SIDE they’re on. Which side the others are on, how many sides there are, and WHAT they’re called. They need clarity. The media offers this to them through simplistic, reductionist rhetoric and headlines that oftentimes dangerously reduce extremely complex subjects such as immigration, war, the economy, public services etc to ‘camps’ or other elements of identity politics which stir emotions in the average citizen and thus makes these once distant and abstract factors seem like they are easily understandable and relatable.
The danger lies not only in the inevitable fracture of society and societal tension, violence, and isolation, but also in the fact that, when the time comes, citizens primarily use this information to inform their vote (in democratic countries).