Our Doom Porn Fascination

What drives the fascination millions of people have with doomsday/apocalypse scenarios which makes them think their generation is the last or chosen one to endure humanity’s end times?

I first started coming to this website in the mid 2000s and while it has certainly changed in many ways over time, one aspect that hasn’t changed is members’ fascination with threads about doomsday scenarios.

You would think the thought of this planet’s annihilation would frighten people and be a taboo topic, but it just seems to attract and intrigue most of us into reading more and speculating.

If you think we live in exciting times and big changes are just around the corner, what makes your prediction any more solid than the countless other failed predictions?

People always claim to have evidence that their prediction is accurate, so let’s see what you have. Are we living in the end times and what makes you believe we are on the cusp of monumental change?

a reply to: Incandescent

What drives the fascination millions of people have with doomsday/apocalypse scenarios which makes them think their generation is the last or chosen one to endure humanity’s end times?

Because we are conditioned to beginnings and endings. First from the solar day and night, then from the stories we tell and the books we write or the films we make. "THE END"

The story has to have a beginning and an end.

Now, to induce fear and increase consumerism, lets add a scary ending.

Some people are losers and think because their life sucks,so does everyone elses,if people worried about themselves more be less of the idiot doom porn,some really need to get a life

I don't know about anyone else but I usually stray away from the doom porn although I do agree that there is a sizeable group who have always been about who do get a little excited over doom porn cc.2012.

I personally do think though that it would be really cool to see the end of the world, in a kind of "lets sit out and watch" type of thing. Its twisted and wired I know, but I do think it would be interesting to see how this whole story that is humanity ends.

Well, it's not like there haven't been mass extinctions on planet Earth before. Perhaps that has something to do with the fascination....a nuclear exchange could wipe out everyone.

We don't live in a stable environment.

www.nationalgeographic.com...

dumbass talking monkeys with doomsday technology doesn't paint a very rosy picture, eh?

a reply to: Incandescent

Fear, uncertainty, and doubt (FUD).

Having faith in an omnipotent being is easy, how can you lose. But having faith in your fellow man, now THAT takes some serious faith. People just assume the very worse in people because people exhibit so many bad behaviors in life. People are greedy, selfish, self-centered, mean, uncaring, mischievous, bored, callous, vengeful, etc.

The thing is at any given moment or time in history, there is always an equal amount of evidence so support a positive or negative view of humanity. "Man is the measure of all things." But I really think the New Age philosophers got it right when they say, "Each of us creates our own reality." I think how we see the world and The Doom is a choice. We either choose to have faith in our fellow man. Or we let FUD consume our point of views.

a reply to: dfnj2015

Fear, uncertainty, and doubt (FUD).

So what you are saying then is people who are obsessed with doom porn are Fud's.....

Scottish members will get what I mean.

I think there are different reasons, depending upon the person.

One of them is that there is something exciting about the possible demise of our current infrastructure and society. A chance to experience our most primal self- having our actions directly related to survival.
Modern life is such that we are so far separated from the earth and our bodies.... to live often boils down to getting money. But money is simply the way to get food, shelter, belongingness.

Our food comes in styrofoam and plastic wrapping, our warmth and light comes from appliances that we don't know how to build, running off electricity that is produced elsewhere. Our homes are built by someone else, our children are educated by big institutions and we travel so fast in enclosed vehicles, we don't really experience the ground or the air.

The idea of being left with nothing, drawing upon our instincts, primal emotions and creativity is somewhat exciting.

Because you see the world in the mess that it is, and you realise the only solution may be a reset button.

a reply to: Incandescent

What drives the fascination millions of people have

What drives the fascination millions of people have with anything ? Our species is easily fascinated. Like the cartoon dog in the animated movie "UP'' that when focusing on one thing is so easily distracted by a passing ''SQUIRREL.

And then there is always this bit.


But now, for something completely different, back to doom porn.

Mass media creating mass culture. Huge blockbuster movies and TV shows. One tv program called Scorpion has a bunch of misfit saving the whole world from extinction each and every week. Post apocalyptic and zombie shows abound. One fails and another pops up to replace it. These shows are, well, zombies, one dies and another replaces it. The message, the doom porn message, is pumped into western culture like a junkie pumps H into a vein.
Why? Because it sells.
And why does it sell?
Many reasons too numerous and complex to elaborate on here that range from our simple desire to pump adrenaline through our systems to outright existential conundrums that may or may not lay at the core of all of our beings.

Take that and overlay it on top of a culture that is historically embedded in the Bible and all it's tales of earth shattering scenarios, floods and plagues and the fire next times and it should be no wonder how easily we are treated to eschatological considerations.

My interest began in the 50s when we had to duck and cover in school for air raids. Not just any air raids but BIG air raids. Not a threat that little Terry could run home to for safety, or maybe run to another town for safety, or jump on an air plane and fly to another country for saftey, but rather the complete annihilation of little Terry, and the other students as well, and his teachers, and his parents, his whole family, and every single person he might ever know. Exploding and burning in a second to fine ash, if he was lucky.

Juxtaposing that with those Bible passages that claimed ''not the water but the fire next time'' and you catch that drift.

Let me ask you. Might it be that this ''doom porn'' fascination is preventing us from really acknowledging how close we are to the brink? That #ing bomb and all it's brothers and all it's ugly sisters of mass annihilation that we have born upon ourselves over the last half century, are they real or just a figment of our mass imaginations?

a reply to: Oldtimer2

My life is great. I have a great job. Nice house. Beautiful woman to spend my life with. Plenty of friends.

I love so called "doom porn" i love thinking about the end of the world. Some of the theories are off the wall but still like to think about them.

originally posted by: OtherSideOfTheCoin
a reply to: dfnj2015

Fear, uncertainty, and doubt (FUD).

So what you are saying then is people who are obsessed with doom porn are Fud's.....

Scottish members will get what I mean.

This made me laugh of loud.......... you really do need to be Scottish for it though