Stealing Your Eyeballs? (Observations of the Week)
1. They’re Coming For Your Eyes!
THE QUESTION: What is the internet?
The Answer: Oh boy…
It is the place we go for the latest news, which is mostly terrifying, disheartening, or in the very best cases, vitriolic. In the last week alone, I’ve been: (1) swept into the Omicron craze (Omicron, my conspiracy-theorist social-media buddies have claimed, translates to the “end of time” virus); (2) informed of abuse allegations in an international non-profit I’ve supported in years past; (3) told that Pope Francis is somehow ruining the Catholic Church again (everyone is always ruining something); (4) put on notice that inflation, which was once called transitory (meaning “temporary”), might not be transitory at all.
Cheers to you, Internet, says I, raising my $25.00 bottle of acid-rain polluted tap water.
We live in the Age of the Eyeball. News organizations, social media influencers, and political parties do their best to buy our eyes, to attract our attention, and what better way to do this than by the constant churn of negativity? According to a 2019 article in the L.A. Times,
A new study involving more than 1,000 people across 17 countries spanning every continent but Antarctica concludes that, on average, people pay more attention to negative news than to positive news.
The takeaway? People in Antarctica are extremely positive folks.
The Observation: A local request.
Pause and consider this: How much of the fear mongering and outrage stoking is nothing more than hook and line? How much of it is designed to lure you in, to direct your attention, to pull you in a direction that benefits another? And how much of it distracts you from the needs in your very local life?
2. Monday Photography
Some things are still sacred.