Narrative

2026-05-18
Information age they say.

The information is hidden deep beneath dead bodies and bombed buildings. The information is not easily accessible.

What you read, hear and watch are usually already packaged stories. You got full story. Who is good, who is bad, what, why and who you should vote for next year. You don't need to think, just pick a side, you get feeling, belonging. Your tribe won or lost.

You don't pick news sources based on accuracy. There is no way to even evaluate that anymore. You pick based on which story feels like home.

You chose some sources which are closer to your already made up character. Then feel good or angry. You are not alone and it's 1:0 for your team. Next time it may be better, faster and maybe even with fireworks.

Layers over every event from the first second. To get facts is impossible. What you get are often multiple layers over something that may happened or even not. It does not matter.

And you don't notice because the chain feels like help. Someone is making sense of the chaos for you. That feels like a service.

It's acceptable to read that your imagined tribe, club or just favorite group wiped out villains, enemies, those bad ones. It's much easier to digest that, than to really see 10 dead bodies infront of you, without any tribal story. Just dead bodies, crying kids and family members around. That is brutal, ugly, raw and too real. Your nervous system would not like it. Some fake pre-packaged whole story is something you can consume and it entertains you. You get emotions. After one minute you can scroll to something different.

Watching closely one human to die is not something that can be scrolled easily, it hits differently, it lands. And it costs something. But just headline about thousands killed? Numbers instead of bodies, story instead of faces? That's entertainment.

Brain is not made for planetary scale input. You probably don't even know hundred kids. How could you digest to see them die? Their bodies in pieces with blood all around. All real emotions of their family members. But just a headline? You can eat that every day with a cola. Share, judge, like or hate and order something cool from the store next minute. The belonging thing is the actual product being sold. Not information. Belonging, confirmation. The feeling of being among people who see it correctly. Where correctly means the same as you.

Information, raw data are boring. You are not interested. The news gives you feeling. Cheap, endless supply. The understanding of actual events would require your nervous system to make contact with something real. That is not pleasant. That is not what you want.

And the whole apparatus, journalists, editors, algorithms, your own clicking habits is perfectly designed to ensure that contact never happens. Sensation over the cost of actual contact with reality. Actual event, sequence what happened sits somewhere inaccessible under mountains of narrative.