Wankery Verdict: "Everything is Shit"
Charge: Doomscroll-Induced Delusion
The Wankery Verdict is a regular ruling on the latest in wellness, productivity, and cultural nonsense. Each case is examined, sentenced, and assigned a Wankery Score for severity.
THE WORLD IS AWFUL!!!!!
Dude - I only asked you if you wanted a coffee…
EVERYTHING IS GOING TO SHIT!! MISERY! WAR!!! COST OF LIVING!! BAD MEN!! SCREENS! MANOSPHERE!! DEATH!!
So, regular milk or….?
CHAOS!! AI COMING FOR OUR JOBS! MANIACS IN POWER!! MY FRIEND’S AUNT’S SISTER’S HOUSE GOT BROKEN INTO! WE’RE DOOOOOOOOMED!!
Right. For that you’re not getting a muffin.
You know that statistically it’s actually one of the best times in human history to be alive?
FAKE NEWS!!! Everyone wants to be a celebrity! Nobody wants to be a doctor! Death! Panic! And my neck’s gone all weird!
Yeah, sorry - it’s true. For most of human history everyone was desperately poor - even a couple of hundred years ago most of the population lived in extreme poverty. Now it’s under 10% globally. Children dying as toddlers used to be par for the course. Now it’s dramatically lower. Humans used to die at around 30. Now that’s the time we think about leaving home.
Sorry to shit on your parade, but we are - inconveniently - not yet circling the drain as a species.
But wars!!
Yes. And there have been far worse periods for global conflict. By quite a margin.
AI is coming for our jobs!!
Maybe. Maybe not. Like the printing press. And machines. And computers. And the internet. And cars. We do love a technological panic. It’s one of our little traditions. We generally find a way through.
So why does it feel like everything’s shit then?
Well for starters you are mainlining doom via your phone. You’re taking a constant stream of the worst things happening anywhere on Earth, pouring it directly into your brain all day, and then concluding… that everything is terrible.
Which - in fairness - is a logical conclusion.
The issue is our brains are not built for this. We’ve never had access to this volume of information before. Time was you just worried about Nigel from down the road’s boils, and whether the turnip crop was going to be good this year. We’ve never been able to mainline doom before - and, it turns out, it’s not great for our mental health!
So I just shouldn’t be informed? Shouldn’t care THAT EVERYONE IS DYING?
Breathe! “Everyone” is not dying. You, for example, seem to be extremely alive. And have a phone. And a job. And the ability to pay for a Netflix subscription. And enough disposable income to have a “favourite cheese”. Tell that to a seventeenth century peasant.
No - the point is not to tap out - it’s to remember how your brain is wired.
Go on…
The issue is your amygdala.
Oh my GOD - what is that? Am I going to die????
Thanks - that was an excellent amygdala demonstration. It’s a very normal and vital part of your brain that’s wired for survival. The shitter is it’s biased to notice the bad stuff - as its job is to learn from danger to keep you safe from it in future.
Humans are wired to notice danger. That’s how we stayed alive long enough to invent Pret. “Things are quietly improving” does not get the same internal reaction as “FIRE, COLLAPSE, DISASTER”.
Incidentally, this is also why the media focuses on DOOM. “Things are quietly getting better” doesn’t get clicks. “THE WORLD IS ENDING AND IT’S YOUR FAULT” buys someone a second home in Ibiza.
So my brain just… ignores the good stuff?
Pretty much. It files it under “irrelevant, no immediate threat, carry on”.
Meanwhile every negative headline gets treated like a personal emergency. And you’re now exposed to all of it. All the time. Where once you were worried about your family and maybe a neighbour’s slightly aggressive goat, you’re now processing war, global economics, climate collapse… and someone telling you your cortisol is making you fat at 11.47pm.
It’s A LOT.
Ok… but it’s still all true?
Yes it is, sunshine! The world is very far from perfect. But you having a full emotional collapse about it isn’t exactly solving global conflict, is it?
Oh - and, you’re not going to like this… but saying ‘everything is shit’ is just really fucking lazy.
HOW DARE YOU?? EVERYTHING IS AWFUL. THIS IS SERIOUS.
Yeah yeah - the thing is, saying “everything is shit” is socially very chic. You think it makes you sound intelligent. Engaged. A serious person with thoughts.
Whereas saying “actually quite a lot of things are improving” or “isn’t it lovely most of us don’t live in hovels?” makes people look at you like you’ve just suggested everyone should do a juice cleanse or take up Morris Dancing.
So we all just tell each other things are terrible and agree with each other.
That’s depressing…
Yup! And it also gets you off the hook from doing anything positive. Which is VERY convenient.
Because if everything is doomed, you don’t have to try very hard, do you? You can just sit there going “well what’s the point?” and call it ‘awareness’. You can say “there are too many problems in the world” rather than picking one and thinking about something you could do about it. You can write off your relationships, your opportunities, the things you could build - all sidelined in favour of a rolling sense of global doom you can’t influence anyway.
Also - and this is my favourite bit - if I convince you everything is shit, I don’t have to feel bad about not doing anything with my own life. Winning!
Fuck you! Life’s not that bad! We’re alive! We’ve got a shot! We’re not living off dung! I love goats!
That’s the spirit!
So what should I do?
Honestly? Just stop mainlining catastrophe for a bit.
The world is not perfect. Far from it. But it is also not the smouldering ruin your brain is currently presenting.
Both things are true. You just keep choosing the version that means you can live a productive life.
The Wankery Verdict
Declaring “everything is shit” while ignoring long-term reality and feeding yourself a curated diet of global disaster is high-grade, doom-flavoured Wankery.
Sentence: Log off. Go outside. Think creatively. Stop acting like you’re living through the apocalypse when you’ve got oat milk in the fridge.
Wankery Score: 8.5 / 10
Ok team - hands up who’s had an “everything is shit” conversation in the last day or so? I’m afraid I’m officially calling Wankery on it. Because - honestly - how is this helping anyone??? And I for one want to get up in the morning and try and do some good in the world - not brace myself for a fog of misery and inertia. But I guess I’m old fashioned like that…
What say you?? Team shit or team not-so-bad-actually?
I keep coming back to this tweet I saw a while ago:
The news: everything is bad.
Poets: okay, but what if everything is bad and we still fall in love with the moon and learn something from the flowers.
Is AI coming for our livelihoods? Jury is still out. My two cents is currently no, based on experience with various platforms. At least until it actually becomes AI and self-aware, it will remain an irritating inconvenience.
Is the world going to sh*t ( or to hell without the proverbial handbasket)? The short answer ... yes. The long answer is still yes, but with historical qualifiers. No big change in human history hasn't followed a deep dive into the worst that mankind can dredge up, and our current situation has been simmering for almost 50 years. Fear over cultural changes, fear over changes in the political landscape, and fear over technological advancement.
Despite all our good and civilized intentions, we are still primates, and react thusly. As long as intelligence, and the greater good can prevent the fear mongers from wiping all of us off the game board, the cream will eventually rise to the top. It just will be an insufferable journey.