...no news is good news...
“He who laughs has not yet heard the bad news.”
-Bertolt Brecht-
Most people like doom scrolling, but I prefer doom researching. Everywhere I go bad news is making headlines, and those headlines are growing more negative and angrier. Crab season is ending early, New York City rats are getting covid and Ben Affleck confirmed we won’t ever see a Good Will Hunting 2. It has gotten so bad that even good news is becoming bad news.
Derek Thompson of The Atlantic and Plain English podcast recently started a newsletter devoted to this increasing phenomena of bad news growth and consumption. In it he shared a pretty interesting statistic.
“In a randomized study of 105,000 headlines and 370 million impressions from a data set of articles published by the online news dispensary Upworthy, researchers concluded that each negative word increased the click-through rate by more than 2 percent. “The presence of positive words in a news headline significantly decreases the likelihood of a headline being clicked on,” they said.”
We are shitposting our brains. In a clickbaity world vying for internet eyeballs, we are death looping ourselves into endless online depressions. If you want readers to help you sell ads to help you own a half dozen houses to hide hookers in, then you need to get in the bad news business. This seems like bad news for good news.
I’m not a glass half empty guy or a glass half full guy. I’m a glass fully edible guy. I buy sugar glasses, chew ‘em up and enjoy a ten-second choco-chip buzz. And I’m so frigging high on cookie glasses right now…
So in this world filled with bad news, delivered by folks motivated to share bad news in the baddest ways possible, I’ve decided I need to start seeing things in a different light. Sure the news can deliver to me with a surly shake, but I can also fight that shit with extra durable baby wipes (bad news though, those are killing the environment). Within all this bad news is some good news.
“We cannot make good news out of bad practice.”
-Edward R. Murrow-
Crab season is ending early? That should be a bummer because we all love delicious buttery crab meat and mustardy dungeness guts. But let’s look at the bright side here.
You Won’t Get Crabs This Summer!
Perhaps I am misinterpreting the terminology here but pretty sure this means you got a straight shot at an STD free summer. So get slamming that skunky sac and twirling your twingus while freaking in Ft. Lauderdale kids, because you got a crab free pass at living.
*editor’s note :: Please don’t confuse pubic lice with dungeness crabs for the sake of a cheap joke in some low class blog. I am pretty sure this is not how pubic lice work. But to be fair I am also not entirely certain that pubic lice don’t work this way. Wear protection if you are dunking donuts and maybe don’t go to Ft. Lauderdale to get funky. And if you do go there, please avoid anything skunky or named twingus.
Take my advice and don’t take my advice. But if you do take it, please give it back to me when you are done.
On the internet even bread, honey and letting pets sleep on your bed can be bad news. Your dog is giving you sheet bugs, your honey is fake, and the bread is better somewhere else.
Well take it all on the road then and go camping! Build a honey bread shrine at some remote pine tree and entertain yourself and your dogs as the local bear population gets carbed up and sticky.
Or sell your bed and sleep on the bread. Honey is the third most faked food in the world, so while you may have a cupboard of sham sugar syrup, you could also have one of the globe’s top 3 jars of counterfeit candy. And that would make you a bronze level badass.
“Bad news isn't wine. It doesn't improve with age.”
-Colin Powell-
The news says you are storing your makeup brushes all wrong? Guess what, you can store those damn brushes however you want. Dip them in fake honey and paint a pig. You know if you put lipstick on a pig, it is still a pig, but if you paint fake honey on a pig it is halfway to a ham dinner. Noting the other half will require pig murder though. And that could be bad news for anyone in your vicinity. Tasty, smoky, and delicious bad news.
“Headlines, in a way, are what mislead you because bad news is a headline, and gradual improvement is not.”
-Bill Gates-
AI has figured out how to draw hands OMFG what are we going to do? Well how about humans start wearing fake hands? There is no way your day is going to be any worse if you start wearing faux fists and fingers all over your meat mitts.
Look at that, even cats are doing it. If the meow meow posse is doing it then it is a good idea, because cats are scientifically proven to be awesome. Take that BIG DEEP FAKE INC.! Draw my real hands however many times you want. I’ll be going full swiss army hand.
The singles are upset again, because almost half of these unpaireds are struggling with doubt that they shall never meet THE ONE. Well remember a few bad headlines ago when I told you this was #NOCRABSUMMER? That’s right Jonny & Jenny Singleton, this is your lucky year to drip deep into doingus and dwingus and get some greasy grimy group sex going.
Don’t just look for the one. Look for the many, and however many more they might know, and a few more after that. If you are in Florida, head to Miami where the average fucker does it every other day. Then head to “The Villages” where they care more about alligators than crabs.
“It is an ill thing to be the first to bring news of ill.”
-Aeschylus-
So why am I seeing all this bad news?
According to this fun article on negativity bias from Dylan Matthews at Vox Media, the algorithmic structure of platforms like Facebook can magnify our own negativity biases. From 2016 to 2019, Facebook gave “anger” emoji reactions to posts five times as much weight as “likes” in deciding which posts to show other users because their machine learning algorithms found posts that angered people fueled more engagement than posts that pleased them.
If our instinctual inclinations for provocation fuel enraged engagement, and the data algorithms that feed us fake frenzy are frankensteined for fury, no wonder any hope for headline happiness is doubtful at this point.
What if our bad news is focused on the right targets though? I mean if we are upsetting ChatGPT, Disney investors, and Wall Street Bankers perhaps that means bad news is a kind of good news?
Well, unfortunately it appears we are also giving bad news to Aliens, Bees, Night Owls and Wolves. Nothing and no one is safe from bad news.
Even the buildings are doomed to bad news! What could be the bright side of doomed offices? Well how about a heavy suite of moody moaning high rises.
I mean if we get those bassy buildings together with this shrieking skyscraper we could have a 400 story heavy metal band.
A tall tower headbanging might bring severe and very literal rock and roll with it (you don’t want front row at an event of that nature). But the good news? Demolition means percussion and every good doom band needs a great drummer.
And we shall call this band BRICK SABBATH.
“The truth is, we know so little about life, we don't really know what the good news is and what the bad news is.”
-Kurt Vonnegut-
Whether we are at peak newsletter, not even close, or there is no such thing, I’d think it is fair to say that bad news isn’t going to go away anytime soon. So to deal with this phenomena I have decided to use some of Forbes magazine’s 15 Leadership Tips to Deliver Bad News and reframe the content coming my way just like great business leaders do.
I removed my veil of ignorance and instead put on a full cloak of ignorance. I joined a cult that meets every full moon to eat fake honey ham and da-doink inflatable gators. I say ignorant things like the earth is hollow, I’m a sparrow, and what’s a tarot (this is the code sequence for entry). While the news in its simplest form is a headline, there is nothing to stop that line from being squiggly or criss-crossed. In this cult I am no longer seeking the one, just the many, the few too many, and the many many more.
#NOCRABSUMMER
Plan the conversation backwards they say. That way the news coming in can go right back out to where it belongs? Well with that, the great Harpo Marx can at least make the news again.
“Oh, who was it I saw? Oh, who?”
“Ed, I saw Harpo Marx ram Oprah W. aside!”
And if you decide to join this cult of inverse conversers, anticipate that many close to you will be concerned. Advanced talking points you may consider are, “well at least I don’t have crabs”, or “have you seen my new tiny plastic hands?”. If all else fails you can distract concerned loved ones by warning them of all the bad honey and bread they have in their house.
The news is not always the truth. It is something interpreted by someone else as something someone might see as something to share with someone else sometimes. The bad news is it is never going away. But the good news is it can be whatever you want it to be.
The next time you see bad news in your feed remember it was put there for clicks and reactions. And you control both of those. So please click like and share this article or this cult won’t have enough members to justify the amount of inflated gators and honey I just bought.
SO. MANY. HANDS.
Seeing you be you in written form is always good news Cansafis.