Recently a blogging acquaintance wrote that he’d been doomscrolling for four or five months and needed to stop. In that moment, correctly or incorrectly, I assumed he meant he’d been consuming too much national news. That’s certainly how I’d describe it. Our national news has become so overwhelmingly negative that following it amounts to doomscrolling.
I’ve always kept an eye on national news, just because I like to know what’s going on. Forewarned is forearmed, or something like that. But keeping up with national news this year has not been fun. It has, in fact, become increasingly disturbing — alarming, even — to the point that it does amount to doomscrolling, even if I’m not on a phone.
The word “doomscrolling” came into being during the Covid lockdown. Isolated, people took to their phones, scrolling for hours just to see what was going on in the rest of the world. And, too often, what was going on was not good.
With the covid crisis over, doomscrolling evolved into what Dictionary.com defined as “the act of consuming large quantities of negative online news in a sitting,” requiring neither isolation nor a phone. For the “doom,” one need only watch, read, or otherwise consume national news …
… to see an increasingly unhinged wannabe autocrat exercising virtually unfettered power
… to see uniformed US troops marching into our cities, despite the objections of their mayors and governors
… to know that a man with no medical background whatsoever has fired dozens of highly educated, dedicated medical doctors and researchers, replacing their expertise with his own baseless theories (not to mention advising a gullible, ignorant president)
… to watch Congress, our elected representatives, sit idly by while the president usurps their constitutionally assigned legislative power and responsibilities.
All of this is to say that following national news has become, for the most part, doomscrolling. I do turn to local news for more positive news about my community and things affecting me directly, but even locally, one can’t escape bad news. It’s just different bad news.
Yes. Me too. Not least among the many sad news events for me was the recent embarrassing and unprecedented public scolding of the country’s top military brass by an unqualified and clueless Secretary of Defense. When I was in the USN I always felt satisfaction with the thought that I was working for something more important than just myself, a calling if you will. Hegseth shattered any illusion I may have had that the tradition of military service under civilian leadership would continue work well. By disrespecting flag officers and senior enlisted he did irreparable damage to our military. Doom is not too strong a word for what is happening.
I could hardly contain myself watching Hegseth lecture our military leaders like they were children. (He should have been fired after that first security breach on Signal.) How dare he! And to think he ordered them in from all over the world just to listen to that! It was a tribute to their self-discipline that they sat there stone-faced, motionless, and silent while he (and then Trump!) spoke.
I appreciate your service, Jim, more than you know. I was married to a former submariner, now a nuclear engineer, for a few years. My brother was in the Air Force, my dad in the Army, and my grandson just completed 4 years in the Marines.
Jim, I came across this just now. You might find it interesting … https://substack.com/@adamkinzinger/note/c-161580841?utm_source=feed-email-digest
For someone who loves language, it’s a perfect word. But I see it as harmful because it makes us (or me, at least) feel more negative, and the world doesn’t need that. I think we need more positive news, because there is a lot of goodness in the world, and that needs to be known.
We do indeed need more positive news. If only there were some. But you know the media: “If it bleeds, it leads.” And Washington is positively hemorrhaging these days.
I need to know the news and read and watch and then I need breaks
Same. Gotta know.