The Sweet Spot Between Doomscrolling and Hopium Smoking

Let’s talk about one of my favorite essays of all time, Alan Urban’s “The Profound Loneliness of Being Collapse Aware.” Alan has written a lot of good stuff, but this one stands out at the moment. It opens with a conversation between him and a friend, who keeps prodding him to share what’s on his mind. Alan finally opens up. Basically: It’s just that we’re all going to die a miserable death in the near future, but other than that I’m fine. We might not have several decades left. We might only have one decade left before things rapidly fall apart. An awkward silence follows. Then his friend tries to change the subject—in the most predictable way possible.

“Did you hear what Trump said?”

Ah, yes.

That’s exactly the role Trump and his band of crazies play in our culture. They offer a useful distraction from the inevitable collapse of civilization—and our mortality. It was true then, and it’s true now.

Alan spends the next several weeks, maybe months, trying to open up to various friends and relatives. One of them finally says what everyone seems to be thinking: “There’s nothing we can do… So why even talk about it?” After this, Alan manages to articulate what most doomers want. They don’t want to sit around doomscrolling all day. They want to do something, anything other than engage in the pointless small talk of “Did you hear what Trump said?” As Alan tells it, “most of all, I want someone to hug me and say, 'I know. I’m scared too.’” That’s why so many doomers go online and post doom. They’re looking for that hug, even a virtual one.

Lately, the daily outrage on social media and all these calls to action have a pall of futility on them. If the onslaught of disaster updates weren’t so disturbing, it would be amusing to watch these previously sanguine souls suddenly wake up and realize we’re all in deep trouble, and we’ve been here for a while.

And yet… I’m trying to do better, not just online, but in my personal life as well. Over the last few years, I’ve had to remind myself:

The doom isn’t going away.

So, how do you manage?