📰 TREE 735: What could happen if you changed your approach to what could happen ifs?

I’m revisiting something from 266 posts ago: ‘News is an explanation of things that have already happened or are in the process of actually happening.’ There’s not enough true news to keep click rates high enough to keep selling the ads or justifying the licence fee. So news sites get stuffed with stories with headlines that start ‘What could happen if…’ and end with a made up thing like ‘Donald Trump vomits 17 live hamsters when he’s in court tomorrow?’ Only it’s usually something designed to induce fear.

‘What could happen if…’ stories are not news, even when they appear on respected news sites, which they do. A lot. ‘What could happen if…’ is clickbait. You own one little human brain. Do you want to expend your finite cognitive energy on someone else’s ‘what could happen if…’ that was only written because there’s a tiny chance you might click on the ad for Boohoo or a bowel cleanse or whatever?

I don’t. I will not click on a ‘what could happen if…’ story no matter how much it tickles my curiosity. It saves my brain capacity for better things.

What could happen if Little Terry spent all his time thinking about what could happen if Little Terry spent all his time thinking about what could happen ifs?

Grow slowly
Jeff