Sensationalism Sells
Has Everything Become an Emergency?
One thing dystopian movies have taught me about myself is that I’m not sure I’d want to be one of the survivors.
One thing modern writing has taught me about readers is that doomsday sells.
Allow me to explain.
The popularity of stories depicting a looming apocalypse has sent chills down spines for centuries. Old fairy tales, designed to entertain children, were macabre. Religions have their share of grim stories, too. Even if the prophecies never come to fruition, the fear instilled keeps followers in line.
Then along came moviemaking.
Why not take the grimmest scenario and bring it to life on the screen? People will LOVE it! And they do, of course. Many of these movies become blockbusters.
But wait, my friend, it gets worse.
Now, we have the internet. Writers can finally write, publish, and find readers without the help of traditional publishing. In the past, writers had to find an agent to submit their work to a publisher. The likelihood of signing a contract was so slim as to discourage most people from pursuing the dream in the first place.
It’s fair to say that publishers determined what the public read.
The internet changed all of that. Anyone who owned a computer with wifi could write and publish online. No editors are needed. Writers no longer need to share their profits with a publishing company nor seek their stamp of approval.
Suddenly, a surge of new authors started publishing in places like Amazon.
There are thousands of publications every day. Anyone can publish a book on Amazon. Most books will likely be lost in the sea of books, however, never to be discovered by a reader.
Yet, there’s more.
Although the public has more reading material at their fingertips than ever before, they are reading less. To complicate things even more, the readers no longer have anyone to help them identify good writing from bad writing or fact from fiction.
The reader can choose from a veritable smorgasbord of books, essays, articles, blogs, journals, websites, and information on any topic that pops into their minds.
Writers know they need a title that will lure the public to notice their work. The reader is known to have a short attention span and is easily distracted. The promise of a two-minute read might tempt a reader to scroll beyond the title. It’s two minutes, guys, two measly minutes. C’mon! You can do it.
Oh, yes, and because the competition is so keen, sensationalism became a favored method of attracting readers.
Bold titles that sometimes have little to do with the story are becoming more and more common. Editors dwindled in number. Even if a person was lucky enough to find a publisher interested in their work, the author had to produce a plan to market it.
The world of writing has drastically changed.
That brings me back to the prophets of the apocalypse, a doomsday looming just around the corner. A current trend among today’s writers is to write from a dire perspective. Many writers write in this style, with bold titles followed by a sense of urgency and strong declarations of what is to come or what humanity needs to do. It can have the same effect on the reader as a good old-fashioned hellfire and brimstone sermon. People are attracted to the tone of the message.
I honestly believe that most of us have a deep fear of what lies just around the corner.
Tapping into that fear is an effective way of garnering the attention many writers crave. The more freedom we have to write whatever we please, the more likely sensationalism will become normalized. Do we run the risk of desensitizing the reading audience at some point?
If we predict the imminent falling of the sky every damn day, will people eventually stop caring?
Or maybe there’s some truth to these dire predictions. If so, wouldn’t a wake-up call be appreciated? After all, the world is a mess. Climate change is a reality, politics is a dirty word, inequality thrives, and violence is all around us. Maybe there’s so much information that it’s harder for readers and writers to swallow the fairy tales that once offered such promise.
Is this the day of reckoning at last?
Are we writing predictions, prophecies, and deductions, or are we merely less optimistic as a species? Are we competing for readers? So does competition beat cooperation even in the world of writing? In the end, is this trend helpful or harmful to societies?
I’m no longer sure.
Teresa Roberts is a retired educator, author, world traveler, and professional myth buster. You can find her books on Amazon.
