Our (Secret) Pleasure for Tragedies

A tragedy (as long as it's not ours) brings something new to our always-the-same daily lives. It breaks our routine and also gives us the feeling and remember us how fragile our life is.

I started to watch Black Mirror this weekend. It was quite heavy for me. It doesn't show violence, shots, blood but the effect is quite similar. It shocks you just showing the reality of our society. I loved the production though but still couldn't make it to the third episode. You have to be strong to be able to digest everything and watch the episodes in sequence like we like to do with a show we really like.

But if you've watched the show and read the title of this post, maybe you understand why the reference. For you that haven't watched or don't quite remember, the first episode called "The National Anthem" talks about a princess' kidnap. And the rescue they asked for her life is to have a video of the prime-minister of England being broadcast live to the whole country. In this video he has to be performing an intercourse with a pig. More disturbing than this is that at the end of the episode, the population forgets about the kidnapping, and the whole country is gathered together in front of TVs, laughing, drinking beer to watch the disturbing transmission like they watch a world cup final game.

This made me wonder why humans love tragedies and bad news so much. Videos of violence, people getting hurt or dying always receive tons of views on youtube and goes viral on facebook and it seems like that warning saying that "the images we are about to see contain graphic that might be disturbing for some people" just makes us more excited to see it.

Every time I see something bad on TV, no matter the nature of it, I always have a thought on my mind: Journalists love a good tragedy. The more people involved the better. The bigger the dimensions of the tragedy, more people in front of the TVs. I see their super serious faces but I know they are super excited inside. That guarantees them a script for the whole month: "How did it happened [in details], who where those people, who are their families, the international coverage, what the president said about, an update of what is being done about it days after the incident". They even might have a checklist of how they can explore the fact so they can have a break from searching topics to talk about.

But they only explore tragedies to the bones because we love it. Because we stop what we are doing to watch it. Some research says we like to have the feeling that we are luckiest than those people on bad situations. Other says that it's the adrenaline that the brain releases when we watch something scary, like a video or a picture. But I have another theory. I think we like to see something extra-ordinary happening in our lives. Every day people do the same things: wake up, have breakfast, work, come back home, do something else and go to sleep. A tragedy (as long as it's not ours) brings something new to their lives. It breaks their routine and also give them the feeling of how fragile our lives is. Good news don't give us the same feelings. It makes feel good, but comparing to bad news it only last for a few minutes. We forget them fast. Bad news stick on our brains. We keep thinking about it for days. Try to remember about the last good news you heard on TV. Now try to remember the bad one. The bad one is way easier to remember. First of all, because it obviously sells more. More than the half of the topics on the news are bad news. Second because it's just easier to remember. Maybe it's an ancestral thing that makes us keep remember about the danger while good news doesn't offer any risk so we can't relax and forget about it.

What do you think? What is the reason for our pleasure for tragedies?