So, The Doomsday Clock moved an hour closer to midnight, putting it at 3 minutes to midnight. The Bulletin Of Atomic Scientists see this as representing how close we are to doomsday as a civilization. What great PR for the miserabilists whose mission, it seems is to depress the rest of us.
Isn’t it good to know that Chicken Little is alive and well? Instead of promoting all the things which people are doing to improve the world, these Cassandras would rather focus on the negative.
It is a shame that it is still the case that bad news gets better coverage than good news. If one were to scan through most of the news websites they might get the idea that the whole world was going to the dogs, and that everything was chaos and disaster. You step outside your door and it isn’t like that.
There is the old cliche that a broken clock tells the time right at least twice a day, but this clock is a colossal wind-up. It is true that you get what you flow power to, and if we were all to fall into lockstep behind these guys who feel comfortable using the title scientist while engaged in the most unscientific of activities, then we would march right on down the downward spiral into oblivion.
People don’t want negativity all the time though – Buzzfeed and other clickbait sites use a little teaser that hooks you through the expectation of, or need for this negative news, and then they flip it on its head and give you something positive. Recently there has been a rash of people on Facebook posting happy or uplifting pictures in an effort to push all the bad news down in the newsfeed. Facebook tampers with their algorithm occasionally and has admitted to testing people with negative posts on their wall; it’s not popular.
It gets tiring only hearing bad news. It’s a choice whether to accept it or not. Advertising agencies which work for companies that spread the same old depressive rubbish are helping create a market where that becomes the only thing people see, and the only thing they think they have as a choice. Advertisers can be ethical and they can help to make the world a better place – they can turn back the clock. Better still they can show people how redundant doom mongering is, and we can leave so-called scientists to themselves, spinning their wheels, while the rest of us tell time in a totally different way.