On the Word "Doomscroll"

I object to the role the term "doomscroll" plays in our conversations about the news.

The term's users claim that the unhealthy effect of online news perusal is a matter of the Internet user seeking out the negative. This slights the reality that an obscenely crass and criminally irresponsible news media is engaged in relentless fear-mongering for the sake of exploiting the feelings of fear and anger they create--to say nothing of promoting their assorted political agendas. It slights, too, the reality that the media has much to work with in fostering this situation--in part because that news media has so well-served these agendas, and created such confusion and apathy in those who have anything to do with it. (Indeed, they are quite happy to give platform space to doomists of various kinds who keep insisting that the public is not scared enough, effectively defending their exploitative and apathy-extending behavior.) To the extent that individuals do end up chasing the negative, they have been conditioned to do so by the ceaseless barrage of bad news intended to terrify, to infuriate, ultimately to break them.

The criticism could and should go where it is due--though those who like to accuse Internet users of doomscrolling instead prefer to adhere to the eternal principle of the sniveling conformist, that with all of the power comes none of the responsibility.