Way to trivialise tragedy, people

When catastrophes occur, we turn to the media to learn more.

How sad that the media aren’t up to it.

Instead of a dispassionate recitation of facts, commentators feel they have to emote uncontrollably.

Rather than describing the context of their carefully-chosen pictures, TV stations instead scroll the same out-of-context images of destruction so frequently as to make them into wallpaper.  Wallpaper in which, by the frequency and context in with the scenes are shown the viewer might almost forget that thousands of people are dying.

Using pictures of tidal waves sweeping away cities as advertising for upcoming coverage—or of planes full of passengers flying into buildings as a backdrop for economic commentary—these are the work of people without a soul.

Instead of rational analysis, we get disaster porn.

There are many things that piss me off about disaster commentary as it’s presently done. Showing people dying as if it’s unimportant pisses me off the most.

But there are more things than that about disaster commentary that piss me off. Here’s a few of them:

• People who watch the current cluster of catastrophes and say: "It's the end of the world." Scaremongering fruitcakes talking about plague and locusts and saying it’s “the end days”? Retards reading ‘Revelation.’ Morons talking about something from the Mayan calendar? Shut the fuck up and go back to your mother’s basement!
• People saying "It's just like a movie!" These are people so dumbed down by watching explosions every night on their home theatre they’ve forgotten (or never learned) what the real world looks like. Grow the fuck up! And start watching better movies.
• People saying "at least it's good for the economy!" Learn some fucking economics, you morons!
• Scientific illiterates and activists panting for a holocaust to push their anti-nuclear buttons. Get off the fucking soapbox—and consider that the almost certain scenario at all of the nuclear plants in Japan that all of the hazardous material will be contained within the carefully engineered and constructed reactor pressure vessels and the surrounding containment buildings. And listen to those more rational folk who, in an earthquake, would rather be found downwind from a nuclear plant (whose products can be contained) than downstream from a hydro dam (which can’t).
• And then there’s: "Ken Ring/Deb Webber/Nostradamus predicted this." For fucks’ sake, even Nick Smith is better than this.

These are the sort of people who like to interpose fantasy in front of reality. Who never really know what’s going on. Who at times of tragedy like to push their limp little barrows, or simply open their mouths and let the wind blow their tongue around.

When catastrophes keep occurring, when sharp thinking and rational analysis is more important than ever, I have no time for any of them.