I don’t know how widespread the use of this phrase is, but I heard it and to me it is exactly why I struggle to pay attention to the news. The phrase is ‘tragedy tourism’ and it refers to the constant onslaught of tragedy we ‘visit’ viewing current events in the news. The topics vary and change but message is the same:

Share a tragic event, share the outrage, sadness, and horror, briefly examine the details, discuss them, highlight the anger or controversy, and then move on… find a new tragedy and repeat. You don’t get to live too long with any one tragedy, you merely visit and move on.

Your attention can’t stay on any one thing, because the next tragedy is thrust upon you to provoke further outrage, to keep you distracted, triggered. And a mind that is consumed with tragedy is a controlled and manipulated mind. It’s a mind that is angry and distracted from rational thought, it’s a mind that easily forgets the last reason to be outraged because the new reason, the next distraction, fill your consciousness with yet another and another tragedy.

No time for clarity of thought, no time to examine the issues and nuances of the last tragedy you visited, you just move on to the next tragedy because that’s where the news cycle is now. You visit each new tragedy like you are on a vacation bus tour. In the same way that a bus stops to show you a touristy landmark just long enough to learn a few highlights and minor details, and take a picture, the news peppers you with the lowlights, the sadness of the tragedy before putting you back on the metaphorical bus to be dropped off at the next tragedy.

Tragedy tourism keeps you hopping from one tragedy to the next, filling you with new reasons to be angry and upset, but not leaving you long enough on any one tragedy to allow you to feel immersed. The stay at each tragic event too short to care enough to truly understand the tragedy or to meaningfully interact or think critically about it before moving on to the next one.

An angry mind doesn’t think critically. A divided attention doesn’t promote activism or action. A distracted population doesn’t do anything to upset the status quo… and the news pumps out a new tragedy for us to visit.