|
This is something that's been bouncing around my head for a while and while I've seen a couple of old articles about it there's a distinct lack of scientific information about it. First I'm not talking about outrage culture, safe spaces, self righteous outrage SJW stuff (but they may be related or even symptoms ). I'm talking about habitual consuming of information from the internet that makes you mad. You can come to this forum (the whole front page is dominated by posts of things that make you angry) or one of thousands of other forums or image boards that cater for every political leaning or set of beliefs (the news media is actively feeding this now) and find an endless supply of stories that make you mad and you don't stop at one you keep going through story after story feeling your body's sympathetic response grow stronger and stronger as you project yourself into the victim's place in the stories. And why do you do this? You can't fix these problems they're things in other countries and beyond your reach so in the end you're angry, motivated but have no way to treat the cause. Then bizarrely you do it again tomorrow or maybe in just a few hours, you feel drawn back to it. So is this an addiction? Getting angry certainly causes a whole bag of hormone and neurotransmitter changes in your body but is the cycle of outrage with no relief or recourse causing a receptor change in your brain that it comes to expect everyday? It's also not good to be in such a elevated stress state so often, your mind and body needs its down time. Also is there a long term problem building here? The internet hasn't existed long enough for people to show the very long term effects of such a huge negative information intake, could there be a stress disorder epidemic in the future? On the flip side: could this be conditioning people to be less outraged at lesser things as they adapt and more robust overall? And importantly the information is now flowing much easier to the entire population and awareness of things has to be increasing (although I'm worried people will be aware of too many things and not know where to start). My personal experience with this forced me to set rules about consuming internet information: not to get mad in any circumstance, only consume the unfiltered base information strip out emotion and identity so I can't project into the story, don't read reaction comments to avoid a "join the mob outrage" mental response, and actively find stories where I can do something to help. At fist I felt more anxious (this is why I think there's a physical element) but reaction after few weeks was I felt much calmer and no longer had a desire to go read more articles even though I had the opportunity while at the same time I'm not ignorant of what's happening in the world.
|
#
¿
Sep 14, 2016 11:34
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 10, 2024 08:55 |
|
|
Ddraig posted:If you fundamentally believe that all people are created equal then I really don't know how you can live in the modern world and not be outraged. The alternative is despair, and anger at the very least has historically been a catalyst for change. Yes but the difference between then and now is back then the source of the outrage was atleast close to them and further away outrages that reached people were so large that they could create a coordinated movement. Now people can take the entire weight of the world on their shoulders from their bed like they think that getting angry at someone being beaten and robbed by police in a country in the other side of the world is going to do any good. All the time I could be using to help a set list of problems that outrage me and I can influence would be wasted if I started getting angry at every single problem in the world with no rational plan. thecluckmeme posted:
But is the brain built to sustain that much negative information, building up without release are we all going to end up with degrees of mental burn out down the road? You're right that it does impassion some people but I keep seeing people that seem trapped in a outrage feeding cycle they just want to keep reading these things that piss them off but never do anything about them, because there's no downtime to think, meet other people to talk and plan in the information age maybe?
|
|
#
¿
Sep 22, 2016 11:28
|
|