Maybe the world has changed — or maybe I'm just paying attention to things I didn't used to — but sometimes it feels like whenever you get to talking to somebody, be they an old friend or just your casually acquainted neighbor, the conversation almost immediately turns into a litany of complaints about everything that is wrong in their life; in the world.
I know the old saying is that "misery loves company," but is the only thing we can really connect with each other over whatever has gone wrong in the world, and in our lives?
Yes, I am well aware that blood and guts sell and the old saying in the newspaper industry was always ”if it bleeds, it leads” but I have to admit I'm just getting awfully tired of everything being negativity, drama and crisis!
Maybe it's the Internet and the "attention economy" we need to point fingers at. After all, it's very difficult to actually get attention in this cluttered circus of life, and so the use of clickbait is a pretty common practice. I saw that in practice earlier today when I noticed that one of my favorite (serious) podcasters was having a panel discussion about the transitioning government here in the United States but the title was phrased as if there were some burning emergency and the world was about to end.
Seriously, this dude does not need to resort to clickbait to get viewers — he has 8 million subscribers on YouTube!
Now I'll be the first to admit — having been born and raised in uber-egalitarian Denmark — that I was raised in an environment where being overly optimistic and talking about overly positive things was often equated with a form of bragging... which was not well seen.
But you can swing too far the other way, as well.
To be honest, sometimes it feels like I should almost be embarrassed to admit that I'm actually having a good day as opposed to a lousy one. And then it would be far more "appropriate" for me to talk about the fact that the lettuce in my vegetable garden is wilting rather than the fact that my tomatoes are giving a bumper crop.
If you look at it all from a deeper perspective somehow we seem to have turned a not particularly pleasant corner in which our competitive nature is gradually becoming more focused on who's worse off rather than who's better off. And I'm not talking about money here!
Of course, it's entirely possible I'm missing the point entirely here because I'm getting older and I'm hanging out with my peers who are also older people who have more and more aching body parts! I'm grateful for the fact that I have only a limited number of aching body parts and for the most part I'm still in pretty good shape as I approach my 65th birthday, later this year.
So anyway, this all came wandering through my mind because I was talking to my neighbor and he was on and on about vet bills, and then he was on and on about the swampy spot at the top of their property, and then one and on about the cost of the fence they just put up and then he was on and on about how his car had been unreliable lately and it just made me pause and notice how the conversation didn't really contain anything positive.
Undeniably, there is a lot of not so good stuff going on in the world… and the irony of the fact that I am here complaining about people complaining is also not entirely lost on me!
Anyway, sometimes I can't help but wonder if the deeper reason I end up watching so many funny cat videos is that they offer a funny and light-hearted counterpoint to the next person kvetching about everything that is wrong in the/their world?
Does there always have to be something wrong, in order for us to relate?
I hope not!
Thanks for stopping by, and have a great weekend!
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Created at 2025.01.24 23:28 PST
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