When the World Is Fed Fear

The world didn’t suddenly become terrifying; fear simply became profitable, and we’ve been breathing it in like oxygen.

Photo by Aarón Blanco Tejedor on Unsplash

Some days it feels like the world isn’t getting worse — the storytelling about it is. Lately, everything looks off… distorted, like someone’s turned up the noise and turned down the truth.

Everywhere I look, fear is being fed to us in bite-sized portions — on the news, our phones, and in the quiet spaces between one scroll and the next.

It’s all perfectly packaged > fear + outrage +anxiety — now algorithmically personalised, just for you.

And the scary part? We’ve started calling it “information.”

I can only speak from what I see but the shift is undeniable. We’re not just being informed anymore, we’re being steered ... programmed(!) even — to react, divide, distrust and fear.

Turn on the news and it’s the same cycle on repeat — conflict, threats and blame, ofcourse! Different day, identical script, delivered by the same familiar faces.

But step outside your front door, talk to everyday people, and suddenly the world looks completely different.

There’s so much beauty, decency, and everyday kindness that never makes the headlines.

Because that doesn’t sell, does it?! Fear does.

Fear keeps people watching, scrolling, voting — clinging to promises of safety that are blatantly false.

And I can’t help but wonder ...

Who decides what we see?

Who decides which stories get airtime and which get buried?

People die every day across continents, of all colours and for countless causes. — but the coverage feels … selective ... convenient; as though someone, somewhere, decides > this is the outrage of the week.

The media may pretend to be a mirror, but it’s really a magician — showing you one hand while hiding the other.

And behind the curtain? Power, money, and men who want to rule the world — or at least the story of it.

Sometimes it feels like an episode of Pinky and the Brain — except this time, they’ve got billion-dollar budgets, social-media empires, and governments wrapped around their little fingers.

The rich fund the powerful.

The powerful shape the narrative.

And the rest of us? We’re left arguing in the comments section while the real deals are made behind closed doors.

What breaks my heart most is how easily we’ve fallen for it.

Older generations are being spoon-fed fear through headlines and half-truths. “The world’s not what it used to be,” they say. “Everything’s gone downhill.”

But has it? Or have they just been told that enough times to believe it?

And the younger ones — we’re not innocent either. We doomscroll until we can’t breathe, then call it “staying informed.”

Somewhere along the way, we forgot how to debate without destroying each other, how to question without being labelled, and how to think for ourselves.

Social media was supposed to connect us, but instead, it’s colonised our attention.

I keep coming back to the same question — when did we stop asking why?

Why are certain stories amplified?

Why are others ignored?

Why do the same billionaires own the platforms that shape our politics, conversations and our sense of self?

Maybe it’s because the truth can’t be squeezed into a hashtag or a headline. It asks more of us — to be curious, empathetic, and to exercise discernment. And that’s harder than outrage.

I don’t have all the answers — I rarely do — but I can tell u this ...

When I stop watching, step outside and I speak to actual human beings, the world looks nothing like the version being sold to me. There’s laughter, struggle, generosity, and love — all the humanness that so often gets drowned out by the noise.

Maybe it’s time to turn down the fear and tune into the truth — not the curated headlines or broadcast versions, but the truth you find in one-to-one conversations, connectedness, and the ordinary magic of people simply being decent to each other. 

Fear might feed the system, but the humanity that lives in a neighbour’s story, a stranger’s smile and the parts of us no algorithm can manipulate — is what will starve it.