Communications Major

One of the largest instances of mass digital snitching in history took place following the Capitol riots on January 6, when internet users began combing through the astoundingly large amount of photo and video evidence generated by the event in order to identify those who’d stormed the Capitol.

Your phone alarm goes off at 6 in the morning. You check some news sites and Facebook. It’s bad news after bad news.

Coronavirus cases keep climbing, and so do deaths. Children can’t go back to school. Your favorite restaurant and barbershop are still closed. People are losing their jobs.

Everything is awful. The world as we remember it has ended. Next thing you know, it’s 9 a.m. You haven’t climbed out of your pit of despair yet to even shower. You repeat this masochistic exercise during your lunch break — and again while getting ready for bed.

This experience of sinking into emotional quicksand while bingeing on doom-and-gloom news is so common that there’s now internet lingo for it: “doomscrolling.”