Yep!
Hard to believe, but my mother is addicted to porn. And I do mean addicted! early in the morning, through breakfast, at lunch time and dinner time.
She cannot get enough!
And it is making her ill.
Physically ill.
Sore throat, ulcers, congestion… You name it.
She loves porn!
ummm….
oops….
Before you get the wrong, ahem, idea, she is addicted to ‘worry-porn’, also known as ‘panic porn’ or ‘fear-porn’.
What?!
Did you think she was into naked-albino-midget-tapioca wrestling?
If you have not heard of the term “fear porn”, it refers to mainstream media content that deliberately and enticingly plays on people’s fears about disaster, disease, and death. Yes, there are media outlets that go beyond informing and alerting the public.
I travel all over the world. and every country, every state and every island has the exact same 6 o’clock news with headlines screaming of murder, mayhem, fires and rapes.
Media is necessary and important to inform the public and to educate. However, at what point does informing turn into aggressively alarming people? Certain media is “intentionally” trying to panic the public. In a way, they are violating your minds. (Psychology Today, May 2021)
While writing this article, I scanned (and mostly skipped) today’s headlines:
- 19 Die in a fire
- Hospitals overwhelmed
- New daily virus record
- AOC has rona
- Cliff collapses on tourist boats
What is the human mind supposed to do with this? These words will put people into a fight, flight, freeze response and will activate the amygdala. Perhaps, people’s minds can tolerate this reaction for a brief amount of time, but why chance it.
My mother is addicted to bad news. Constantly asking me if I heard about Russia, one of the ‘Stans (as in Paki, Afgan, etc.) of the latest political news.
Nope, I say, how is that new refrigerator I bought for you working? Desperate to change the subject.
I firmly believe that if she filled her mind with less porn and more meaningful, thoughtful or even meaningless information (not porn) she would reduce her physical ailments by half.
Now this is not to say I recommend being ignorant to the world around you. Far from it. But I would hazard a guess that you do not NEED to know about the fires, stabbings and mayhem.
It is just polluting your mind.
It is preventing you from being productive and preventing you from success.
If you are preprogrammed to watch the news, and don’t know what to do with that 30 minutes of your life, here are some suggestions:
- Listen to anything by Jim Rohn. You can’t help but be uplifted by his message, and you will learn something.
- Read a book: Here is what I am in the middle of now: P.T. Barnum’s The Art of Money Getting, The Shallows: What The Internet is Doing To Our Brains, The Advertising Solution, Cultish, and How To Rule The World, A Handbook for the Aspiring Dictator. Heck! Read or re-read Systematic Magic!
- Limit or get rid of your media intake. This includes social media, which is filled with plenty of strangers and “friends” trying to persuade and terrorize you.
- Once you have limited media, use that time to go outside in the sun and walk or run. Exercise can help reduce your stress levels.
Garbage in, garbage out.
