Althouse: The most-read national stories at The Washington Post all speak to the fear of hidden evil.

May 10, 2023

The most-read national stories at The Washington Post all speak to the fear of hidden evil.

46 comments:

Kai Akker said...: The "new" TV shows tend to the creepy in themes, characters, general content, too. After watching Frasier and Newhart reruns, I tried popular new TV series -- all highly rated, I did my due diligence before spending this time -- but they made me so anxious and depressed I had to stop watching them. Creepsville. I believe some think that is a bear market characteristic, like the horror movies of the '30s. Not sure how well that angle holds up, statistically, but it does make emotional sense.; 5/10/23, 8:55 AM
rhhardin said...: The most interesting evil hides in the act itself. Do-goodism for example.; 5/10/23, 8:57 AM
Dave Begley said...: Story #5 is from the Omaha World-Herald.

Teenager killed both his parents and buried them in the backyard. This was about 20 blocks west of my house on Poppleton AV. Went to school for a few days. Found out. Sent to the state pen. Model prisoner. But he escaped before his term was up. Never found until after death. DNA match.

Great story.; 5/10/23, 8:58 AM
Joe Smith said...: She wrote a kids book about happiness, but cut off the testicles and penis of her 12-year-old son...; 5/10/23, 9:02 AM
Enigma said...: You reap what you sow.

The WP (and NYT) has stoked fear for years or decades, and has cultivated a paranoid readership. It worked with abortion, guns, global warming, nuclear war / power, acid rain, vehicle safety, Trumpmania, etc. At some point a focus on fear leads to dysfunctional paranoid inaction...such as delayed marriage, delayed childbearing, fear of dating, incel males, females joining de facto convents (universities), and creating a generation that destroys their own bodies in apparent fear-driven competition for acceptance (transgender).

This culture must be self-extinguishing -- and soon-- as life and living requires managing risk.; 5/10/23, 9:06 AM
wildswan said...: I've noticed this also. News isn't mostly exciting or informative, it's mostly macabre, sinister and apocalyptic. Sample: "Why is necrophilia on the rise in Pakistan?" And the movies and shows on Amazon Prime are the same - mostly eerie, despairing and filled with strange kinds of violence. Sample: a series about a fan who becomes a serial killer avenging any insult to her favorite star with macabre murders.
In the real world it's spring - a beautiful spring here and this is a poem I always read in the spring.

"Loveliest of trees, the cherry now
Is hung with bloom along the bough,
And stands about the woodland ride
Wearing white for Eastertide.

Now, of my threescore years and ten,
Twenty will not come again,
And take from seventy springs a score,
It only leaves me fifty more.

And since to look at things in bloom
Fifty springs are little room,
About the woodlands I will go
To see the cherry hung with snow."; 5/10/23, 9:10 AM
Dear corrupt left, go F yourselves said...: DEMOCRACY DIES... In blue wasteland.; 5/10/23, 9:17 AM
traditionalguy said...: Interest in evil powers is suddenly popular. People want to understand what is going on around them and how others are dealing with it. The Catholic Church should see many new members. They admit the existence of evil powers and offer to help.; 5/10/23, 9:20 AM
TaeJohnDo said...: Blogger posts daily for several years. The dark secret that fuels her obsession...; 5/10/23, 9:24 AM
Tina848 said...: Like episodes of ID Discovery shows. Beer nuts for the mind. I admit I watch all those shows....; 5/10/23, 9:37 AM
BUMBLE BEE said...: Teen agers go to a cabin by the lake, are stalked by...
Cheezy plots, typically for covid shut-ins.; 5/10/23, 9:47 AM
BUMBLE BEE said...: Pay is the same though. There's that.; 5/10/23, 9:48 AM
cassandra lite said...: The zeitgeist will not be ignored.; 5/10/23, 9:56 AM
n.n said...: Few Are Addressing One of [Mainstream] Media’s Greatest Perils; 5/10/23, 10:13 AM
Ice Nine said...: Damn, you hooked me! Now I'm going to have to read the Washington Post to find out why Trump put all those snakes in that poor woman's wall.; 5/10/23, 10:15 AM
Sebastian said...: Playing on the fear of hidden evil is prog redirect from facing the actual evils of everyday life--the ongoing multimillion invasion, the routine black-on-black killing, the mutilation of teens, the 100K+ annual opioid killings, the multibillion $$ frauds at all levels of government, the millions of unsolved crimes, the rampant disorder in blue downtowns etc.; 5/10/23, 10:23 AM
narciso said...: well there are some classic mystery series like those with john malkovich, this is a problem I noted with the foreign seriesm, previosly avalaible through the dw channel; 5/10/23, 10:26 AM
Michael K said...: It must be those rides on the subway full of crazy people. ALL the original settlers of Australia had dark secrets. They are now the first families.; 5/10/23, 10:42 AM
JMS said...: I saw four of the five as clickbait headlines on Facebook and Google. Are they the most-read because they are the most-promoted, or are they promoted because they are the most-read? Or is WaPo experimenting with HuffPost-style clickbait phrases ("dark secret," "dream home")? Or is it using ChatGPT to write headlines in the style of the National Enquirer in the hope of gaining new eyeballs?

I know FB uses an algorithm to deliver what it thinks I want to read, but I'm seeing more promoted WaPo articles in general, on FB and elsewhere, which suggests they have increased their ad spending (it was reported in December WaPo lost 500,000 subscribers in two years), as well as hired a new headline writer.; 5/10/23, 10:48 AM
stutefish said...: I guess the clickbait algorithm knows what it's doing.; 5/10/23, 11:29 AM
Jimmy said...: Fear is a stock technique for totalitarians, and as usual, the post is happy to do what it can. Just like during the 'pandemic', or Trumps presidency.
Taking Pravda wannabe newspapers seriously is pathetic at this point.
Musk and twitter are in the process of slaying all those old dinosaurs, and the left is too stupid to see what is happening.
The left has bred some good sheep, who will follow orders. It's sad to see people who call themselves experts, educated etc, who are the first to call for totalitarian rule.
History is hard for the left.; 5/10/23, 11:34 AM
Assistant Village Idiot said...: A great insight. When Urban Legends first became a thing there were studies of them to illustrate what types of fears captured people's imagination. It pays to remember that this is what fairy tales are - the real ones collected by folklorists who have that fascination, not the cute illustrated ones. (Even Disney tales had a lot of darkness early on.) There were tales of children lost in the forest in danger of cannibalism because within living memory there had been starvation and maybe...in the next valley, we heard...and during the plague years...

And maybe in 1932 in Ukraine...

The Brothers Grimm collected the stories that had been through the WaPo-ish audience filters six or seven times and then recombined. Those people had their own wokester and Trump-is-both-Hitler-AND-Stalin priors when they told them.

Everything, everything we read in the NYT should have the quiet words "tribal, tribal" whispering in our ears, and everything in the WaPo should have an identical subheading "leaked by some important agency" under it. It is not any different than the stories of wives murdering their husbands and then writing a book about the grief and WaPo readers eating it up.

Ireland's first witch, Alice Kyteler in the 1300s, was not a witch (unless you still believe in maleficium), but she may have been a serial murderer of her four rich husbands. It's one of the few stories that comes to us today from those times - because we love stuff like that.; 5/10/23, 11:40 AM
Indigo Red said...: People seek vicarious danger through entertainment. Real-life news events are presented as entertainment as it always has been. We try to convince ourselves that because of these vicarious experiences, we know how to react if the real thing happens to us. Everything scares kids and young adults. That's why TV and movies portray scary stories for younger audiences. Adults have seen and read every storyline that can exist. Nothing is new to us. We don't shell out fright money anymore.; 5/10/23, 11:50 AM
Static Ping said...: I'm guessing the author got through the five stages of grief pretty quickly. Alledgedly.; 5/10/23, 12:26 PM
NotWhoIUsedtoBe said...: Paranoia sells for some reason.; 5/10/23, 12:44 PM
n.n said...: Playing on the fear of hidden evil is prog redirect from facing the actual evils of everyday life

Critical Empathy Theory (CET) advises human rites, diversity, two men and a womb, underage "benefits", transgender conversion trials, witch hunts, perennial climate change, social justice, rape culture, cargo cult mandates, redistributive/retributive change, labor and environmental arbitrage, CAIR, ethnic Springs, shared responsibility/progressive prices, etc.; 5/10/23, 12:57 PM
Wince said...: The most-read national stories at The Washington Post all speak to the fear of hidden evil.

"YOU ALWAYS DO THAT!"; 5/10/23, 1:01 PM
iowan2 said...: you forgot the one about not making babies because the earth will be uninhabitable before the children die of natural causes. CAGW

But every authoritarian cabal ever, has preached disaster and the cabal is the only fix.

White Supremacy, and home grown terrorism. According to the FBI is our biggest threat.
Hate crimes
AR 15
Plastic straws
Systemic racism
Cows
RUSSIA!!!!!
Cotton

The lies they are telling todays kids are past crazy.....But very historical; 5/10/23, 1:09 PM
n.n said...: Trans and murder invisibility project.

Psychiatric dysphoria and school shootings when politically congruent.

Diversity, Exclusivity, and Inclusion (DEI) by air, sea, and at the border... in corporations, and educational institutions.

Shared responsibility through progressive prices and wages.

Obama's flub in Iraq and funding Iran, Biden's flub in Afghanistan and funding Ukraine and ethnics Springs is a more welcoming approach.; 5/10/23, 1:17 PM
n.n said...: What lies down under?; 5/10/23, 1:26 PM
Robert Cook said...: "The WP (and NYT) has stoked fear for years or decades, and has cultivated a paranoid readership."

Oh, please. Cut the sanctimony. That is the core business model for ALL news media, and always has been.; 5/10/23, 1:36 PM
Robert Cook said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 5/10/23, 1:38 PM
mikee said...: I, for one, appreciate the mild frisson from a story about snakes in a wall or an underwater gravesite. The extreme heebie jeebies that result from any informative news article (and fortunately those are few and far between) about government, the economy, foreign affairs, and society are to be avoided at all costs, especially at my age. Give me all the "scary" stories you want to, about odd things that absolutely do not impact my life at all. Keep your stories about modern reality. That stuff is nightmare fuel.; 5/10/23, 2:11 PM
Free Manure While You Wait! said...: "After watching Frasier and Newhart reruns,"

For the last few nights I have been watching reruns of the show "Movin' On" (1974-1976). It stars Claud Aikin and some other guy as two guys with a tractor trailer hauling freight.

The plots are full of holes, but from a sociological/anthropological perspective they are fascinating. It makes it clear just how far society has devolved in just the last 50 years.; 5/10/23, 2:16 PM
RMc said...: The thing's that so funny about these stories is the narrative that good intentions inevitably lead to bad results:

Your wife writes a kids book? SHE'S GONNA KILL YOU!
Buy a dream house? IT'S GOT SNAKES!
Shapes in the water? DEAD PEOPLE!
Play hide-and-seek? YOU GONNA GET SHOT!
Raise a family in Australia? DARK SECRET!

There's no point in doing anything it seems...; 5/10/23, 2:23 PM
Free Manure While You Wait! said...: "Now, of my threescore years and ten,
Twenty will not come again,"

Read that poem in junior high and have never forgotten these two lines, as we dissected its meaning in class. It got me to thinking of similar lines:

"I was 21 years when I wrote this song,
I'm 22 now, but won't be for long.

- Paul Simon

"Four and twenty years ago I come into this life"

- David Crosby

"Old man take a look at my life,
Twenty-four and there's so much more."

- Neil Young; 5/10/23, 2:24 PM
Free Manure While You Wait! said...: "Fear is a stock technique for totalitarians"

I bet you are one of those people denying what Putin is really trying to do, stop the Nazi takeover in Ukraine.

/sarc; 5/10/23, 2:30 PM
Free Manure While You Wait! said...: "She wrote a kids book about happiness, but cut off the testicles and penis of her 12-year-old son..."

XY =/= XX

The science is settled.

(Nonbinary here. Also extremely anti-child genital mutilation whether it's girls in Somalia or boys in Montana. A section of intestine is not a vaginal barrel, no matter how badly you wish it were so. And it never will be); 5/10/23, 2:36 PM
Joe Bar said...: This proves that the Washington Post is mostly read by White, suburban women.; 5/10/23, 3:24 PM
farmgirl said...: My daughter just said this same thing to me today- our VT news channel nel is apped on her phone and has the goriest of news items to share: a woman was reported kept in a man’s basement, to be found beaten, stabbed &folded into a tote found on the porch. My daughter will soon be 24.

Delete- delete the app!!
It’s an addicting device.; 5/10/23, 3:33 PM
Richard Aubrey said...: IMO, this is related to physically scary thrills. Jump out of the airplane.. AIIEEE, I'm gonna die. Except the chute works. Like last time.
The roller coaster throws me all over the place, there's no guarantee there's a down track on the other side of this rise.... but you know there is.
Sure, you'll jump and scream in the haunted house but you know, going in, no problem.
So we stimulate the thrill reflex knowing it's all going to be okay.

Not like you jump out of the plane wondering if it was the command group which just blew up, and how many of your guys you'll be able to find once you're down...the jump is meaningless.

A series of rhythmic thumps in the basement at two in the morning aren't like the haunted house.

These stories are like the first category...empty thrill with only the illusion of risk or ickiness.; 5/10/23, 4:16 PM
William said...: I wonder how this will impact book sales. The problem is that it's a kids' book. If it were a mystery or, even better, a feminist tome, it would definitely help sales. Anne Perry was a crime writer and when it came out that she was a convicted murderer, it only added to her mystique. I wonder if anyone in Patricia Highsmith's circle suffered an untimely death..... Maybe if she were more of a kids' writer like Roald Dahl it would extend the brand, but murdering people is an ineffective way of handling grief. It sometimes has a cathartic effect if you're dealing with anger issues, but it does not assuage grief....Interesting to note that women will never lie about rape, but they sometimes fib about murder.; 5/10/23, 4:42 PM
fvc said...: Anxiety, anxiety, anxiety. Where's my COVID mask! Who can put an end to the bank failures? Let the administrative state and Senator Warren quiet the alarms that upset me, let there be no impediment to their power.; 5/10/23, 4:44 PM
Rusty said...: Trumps gonna gotcha if you don't watch out!!!!
Mini; 5/10/23, 7:00 PM
Rusty said...: Trumps gonna gotcha if you don't watch out!!!!
Mini; 5/10/23, 7:00 PM
Josephbleau said...: Everyone, no matter how crazy, believes that there is hidden evil in the world and this evil must be watched for. We are plains rovers who light fires and glint into the night, hearing unexplained noise.

We are programmed for it, it's part of why we survive.; 5/10/23, 7:47 PM