Fantasy Worlds

Sometimes reality can seem depressing.  There are times I stop and ask myself why I bother to read the news.  Everytime I open a news website it's filled with stories of horror, sadness, violence, infuriating political posts, basically everything negative and wrong with the world.  It's very rare that news channels or websites bother covering stories that are even remotely positive.  When you stop and think about this and our behaviour - returning time and again to read these stories - it doesn't really seem that healthy.  We make excuses of wanting or needing to stay informed on what is happening in the world, but how true is that?

With more than 99% of the stories we read no matter how infuriating they may be for us we rarely do anything about it.  We say with most of these stories "well there's nothing I can do" and resign ourselves to the fact we can't change the world.  Sometimes the stories we read move us enough to be vocal about them, sharing them to social media and commenting on them voicing our disdain but what do we actually do about it?  I'm guilty of this myself, I am not trying to judge other people for reacting the same way, I understand that mentality.  What I don't understand however is why I and others continue to subject ourselves to it.  If we aren't going to do anything about the things we read about then why do we read about them at all when the only thing it achieves is to make us feel an array of negative emotions?

I ran a poll on twitter a month or two ago asking if people could go a month without reading the news.  I would define that as visiting news websites, or watching news feeds, or following news feeds through other sites.  Research on specific stories would be permitted insofar as needed for professional reasons.  The response was roughly 25/75 yes vs no.  I've done digital detoxes before in which I abstained from using certain sites for a month at a time.  I have no plans to do one for news if that's what you are expecting, the answer is no because I don't actually believe I could do it.  As much as the rest of the world can be depressing, the idea of completely cutting myself off from it and living in quiet isolation is even more depressing.

I love to write and I love to read, and when I am feeling lazy and don't want to do either, I watch instead.  Whatever the focus on my attention I find myself getting lost in other worlds.  In the worlds I create, the worlds I read about, or the worlds I see when I watch TV shows or Movies.  They are a welcome break from the reality of the world we live in.  Rewatching older shows also brings a comfort since you know what to expect, sometimes you can even quote dialogue word for word.  There have been a number of fantasy TV shows that have been vying for ratings, presenting elaborate worlds of lore for us to get lost in, perhaps none more so than Game Of Thrones.  While some might ask why is the show so popular, and why are people so fascinated by it, I think the answer is simply that it presents a world so vast and complex and detailed that you can get lost in it and forget about the real world. 

With Game of Thrones I know the story lines are not all happy, if anything Game Of Thrones is perhaps one of the darkest TV shows to have gained such popularity in a long time.  Getting lost in the worlds these stories portray isn't about getting lost in a happy or a sad setting, but simply forgetting reality.  I would argue the reason why people get enjoyment even when the stories are dark and littered with death is because it's "safe" in the respect that you know what you see is fiction, it's not real and that makes it easier to deal with difficult subjects.  The topic of death for example is introduced to the viewer very early in the series with such frequency that it makes the viewer become desensitized to it over time.  You go from "They'll be there to the end" to "They're probably going to die, I wonder how they're going to die..." remarkably quickly, so much so that you reach the point where you realise no character is safe and that any character can die, yet without the anxiety that is usually attached to such thoughts.