Why I don’t read the newspaper anymore

Didja hear about the New York guy that threw acid in his daughters face? Nope. What about the guys that stole $30M in syrup from Canada’s reserve supply? N’yet. Or that Bruce Willis is going to sue Apple for the rights to own his music library. That’s a negative Ghostrider.

I’ve come to the realization that the world is by and large an unhappy sort of place. Everywhere people want to hurt, abuse, demoralize and intimidate their fellow man. What gets me even more is that people enjoy hearing about it on a daily basis. I stopped reading the newspaper after my first year in college when I realized that there hadn’t been anything really pleasant on the front page of the paper for more than a week. Every article that my eyes happened to gloss over just managed to anger me more and more. So I quit.

It was weird at first, not actually holding the paper in the morning with coffee, but as time passed by I learned to live with it. And while this may come off as me being completely ignorant to the world around me, I’m not totally without the news. The Mass Media culture that we’ve developed into has made sure that there will be a plethora of information available at any time for those that want to access it. If I really need to hear about something it will cross past my vision online or one of my friends or classmates will tell me about it. (Protip: I do not need to hear that Snooki, whoever Snooki is, had a baby.)
I may be wrong here but I assume that people want to hear about all the terrible things that happen to other people on a regular basis simply because it makes them feel better about themselves, which in and of itself, is terrible. I don’t want to participate in supporting something that doesn’t make the world a better place, at least in part. I understand that a lot of terrible things happen to people all the time, but I also don’t need to have that information force fed to me day after day.

I guess what I’m trying to say here is that ignorance really is bliss, and I’ll actively try to avoid the news until I hear about a front page article (not a little one mind you, I want 48 point font and a big ol’ picture) that states “Man wins lottery, buys ice cream for thousands of children.” Until that time comes, I guess there’s always r/happy on reddit.

Stanley is a senior majoring in computer science.