- Invitation Status
- Posting Speed
- One post per week
- Slow As Molasses
- Writing Levels
- Adept
- Advanced
- Prestige
- Douche
- Adaptable
- Preferred Character Gender
- Male
- Female
- Genres
- Fantasy is my #1; I will give almost anything a chance if it has strong fantasy elements. Post apocalyptic, superhero, alternate history, science fantasy, some supernatural, romance, and a few fandoms (especially Game of Thrones) are also likely to catch my eye.
Fear has always been a primary motivator and manipulator in society. Back in the day it used to be more direct and openly commanding: do these things or god/the church/the local lord/the king/etc will punish you horribly. There has also always been a more subtle weave of fear that influences people: the fear of rejection and pariah status for going against the status quo of your social group. Then there was of course the basic primal human fear of the unknown and the foreign, where anything that's not part of your familiar little world is something to fear.
The balance of the fear sources has shifted with the rise of news networks and the internet and technology in general, but it has always been around. We fear different things now, such as less fear over explained phenomenon like illnesses and natural disasters but more about chemicals in our food and religious extremists, but I doubt it's significantly stronger or weaker overall fear levels than people had in the past. Just a quick look back at US history comes up with plenty of examples of fear seeming to take hold of society. There's the post-9/11 era fear of all things Islam, but that's just the most recent paradigm of fear. Consider, for instance, the rampant paranoia and fear of the Cold War era where anything that even hinted at communism was equated with treason and anti-American thoughts. Consider all the hateful fear that was directed toward Japanese citizens of the US during World War 2. Consider all the fear and hate of immigrants throughout the country's history, where each new wave of major immigration came with fearmongers screaming about how they were going to ruin everything. If you go outside of just US history you get a lot of other fun examples of the power of fear, such as the Inquisition and all the xenophobic fear that fueled the Crusades.
I think the main thing that has boosted the appearance of extreme fear is the internet. Instead of just having your local community to see fear from as was the case for the majority of human history, or your local community plus radio/TV, now you can see people freaking out about things all the time. Radio and TV people generally keep their heads when presenting the news, even when sensationalizing things, so only the more excitable people in your pre-internet social circles would likely get twisted up in knots about whatever was going on. Thanks to the internet, however, you've got access to millions of people, and the people most likely to actually bother putting out their opinions on random happenings in the world are the ones with strong emotional responses. Those who aren't afraid or worried about X thing won't go and make a dozen twitter posts about how X thing is no big deal, but the person who thinks X thing is going to kill us all certainly will. It's the exact same mechanism by which angry vocal minorities of various groups and ideologies have a disproportionate representation in public discourse simply because they're the ones who are more likely to bother speaking up. People aren't more fearful overall, you're just seeing a lot more of the freak outs that have always happened.
Society has not "become" more/too fearful any time recently, technology has simply changed how the intake and expression of fear works. Whether or not society in general actually is more afraid of things than it ought to be is a completely separate issue that I don't feel like getting detailed about at the moment.
The balance of the fear sources has shifted with the rise of news networks and the internet and technology in general, but it has always been around. We fear different things now, such as less fear over explained phenomenon like illnesses and natural disasters but more about chemicals in our food and religious extremists, but I doubt it's significantly stronger or weaker overall fear levels than people had in the past. Just a quick look back at US history comes up with plenty of examples of fear seeming to take hold of society. There's the post-9/11 era fear of all things Islam, but that's just the most recent paradigm of fear. Consider, for instance, the rampant paranoia and fear of the Cold War era where anything that even hinted at communism was equated with treason and anti-American thoughts. Consider all the hateful fear that was directed toward Japanese citizens of the US during World War 2. Consider all the fear and hate of immigrants throughout the country's history, where each new wave of major immigration came with fearmongers screaming about how they were going to ruin everything. If you go outside of just US history you get a lot of other fun examples of the power of fear, such as the Inquisition and all the xenophobic fear that fueled the Crusades.
I think the main thing that has boosted the appearance of extreme fear is the internet. Instead of just having your local community to see fear from as was the case for the majority of human history, or your local community plus radio/TV, now you can see people freaking out about things all the time. Radio and TV people generally keep their heads when presenting the news, even when sensationalizing things, so only the more excitable people in your pre-internet social circles would likely get twisted up in knots about whatever was going on. Thanks to the internet, however, you've got access to millions of people, and the people most likely to actually bother putting out their opinions on random happenings in the world are the ones with strong emotional responses. Those who aren't afraid or worried about X thing won't go and make a dozen twitter posts about how X thing is no big deal, but the person who thinks X thing is going to kill us all certainly will. It's the exact same mechanism by which angry vocal minorities of various groups and ideologies have a disproportionate representation in public discourse simply because they're the ones who are more likely to bother speaking up. People aren't more fearful overall, you're just seeing a lot more of the freak outs that have always happened.
Society has not "become" more/too fearful any time recently, technology has simply changed how the intake and expression of fear works. Whether or not society in general actually is more afraid of things than it ought to be is a completely separate issue that I don't feel like getting detailed about at the moment.