Knowing that ‘bad news’ and sensational articles gets more viewerships, rather than positive, uplifting ones, it sadly doesn’t surprise me that City Reporter lost some views that day. But to the extent that it did, was incredibly shocking and very disappointing.
Indeed, I have noticed the same thing with this very own site that most of the uplifting, encouraging, positive posts I write get bypassed, while the negative, bitter expositions I’ve written get a lot more attention.
Naturally speaking, we have an instinctive drive to know the possible dangers around us as a survival mechanism. Which all in all, isn’t a bad thing. And while it’s important to remain informed and knowledgeable about what’s going on in the world, we need to realize that our FOCUS should not entirely depend upon these fear-inducing, emotionally draining, stress-creating content.
So who’s ultimately really to blame here for keeping the population in the dark (literally and figuratively) and perpetuating the belief that the world is full of negativity and violence? Is it the news media inundating us with all of these terrible, stressful situations? Are they compelled to create false flag events just to create even more fodder to attract the population’s attention?
Does the blame lie on us for our continued drawn attention to it?
After all, if the City Reporter’s efforts to show positivity in a day drew more viewership and readers, then perhaps news media around the world would jump on the same bandwagon and start showing more heart-warming, uplifting news stories, rather than doom and gloom and staged gun shootings, for example.
So what is the key takeaway from all of this?
We do this to ourselves, ladies and gentlemen. When we can finally come to the truth of this matter, and realize that we are maintaining our own bitter reality, and finally start working our way out of it, will real change begin and we can see a better, more hopeful future.
By the majority of the population continuing the focus on negativity, hate, division, “bad news”, stress, etc., etc., etc., it is creating an endless cycle in which people actually expect and, in a way, look forward, to seeing bad news in the media.
Can we steer away from this paradigm and actually actively seek and make our own news that guides us to creating more good news and restores faith and hope within all of us? Can we decide to choose which content we indulge in that will give us a better, healthier and more enlightening thought inclinations, rather than being stuck with negative news bombarding us at every turn?
We do have that choice. While it may seem that humanity is instinctively designed to wanting to know bad news in order to prepare for the worst, we must also be aware of the damaging effects it has on not only our mental state, but our physical and spiritual state as well.
We must also be aware that all of the negativity we’re consuming may not even be an accurate representation of our world, but instead an embellishment, an exaggeration, of what’s really going on. This is probably orchestrated in order to keep us in a designated mindset of hopelessness and despair, which further continues this harmful cycle.
Cutting back on this negative outside influence by pursuing light, happy, positive information can have extremely healing and beneficial effects.
Even though the study that City Reporter engaged in showed that their readership dropped by 66% that day, the Guardian also initiated their own form of a similar experiment, this time showing positive results.
The good news is … people like to read good news
Why were these two outcomes so different? Is it a matter of different countries’ perspective? Were people just getting tired of all the bad news and realizing that some good news was a nice, refreshing deviation from all the negativity and pessimism that they were used to seeing?
Regardless of the reason, coming to the realization that we are surrounded by deliberately manipulated news outlets pushing negativity onto us, and the realization that a lot of us are attracted to this sort of material to begin with, will hopefully open our eyes to that fact and that we have the very conscious decision to start pursuing more worthwhile and valuable connections and change our negative inclinations, to positive, uplifting ones.