| Just a personal hypothesis, probably colored by my own biases, but I think it has a lot to do with the ad-based economy of the Internet. The news has evolved to grab attention. It's always done that somewhat, but the Internet and the explosion of options available to people has made it worse than it used to be. Media companies compete for attention by presenting their stories as the most outrageous, most outlandish, most urgent issue ever in the world. A cute puppy is not just a cute puppy. It's everything you need. It saved me. It is the sole beacon of light and goodness in this cold, heartless world. Political party X proposing something that a media outlet's demographic dislikes is not just another bill being proposed, it's the enemy trying to destroy everything good in this world. Literally Hitler and so on. Everything is hyperbolized to the nth degree to try to get it to stand out in the morass of everything else. This trickles down into the way we talk to each other. People don't just disagree, anyone who has a different opinion is literally the greatest villain humanity has ever known and people treat them as such. The root cause is advertising. Media makes money by attracting eyeballs. They attract eyeballs by standing out with something more urgent than what everyone else is saying. Unless we can provide another way for media to make money that changes their incentives for how they write stories, I expect this will continue. |