How do you see yourself? Glass half full or half empty? Are you inclined to see life through rose colored glasses or do you have more of the Eeyore gloomy outlook?
Are you trying to maintain a sense of clear-eyed truth in pursuit of current reality while somehow maintaining some hope?
Hmm…
I’ve been thinking about this as I’ve discovered a genre of YouTube videos that look like the following:
All of This Is Gone: The Dark Story Behind Maryland’s Beloved Fairy Tale Park: Enchanted Forest
Dark.
Dark Story, Dark Truth, Dark Revelations, Dark History…
It’s a vibe, as the young folks say. The word dark must be one of those things that make people click. Sell that video. Get more eyeballs on it. Draw people in…
…to the darkness.
There aren’t necessarily any deep, dark revelations in these videos. I haven’t done any in depth study on them so this is purely anecdotal, of course. But I suspect you could take any local subject you want and make it dark.
The dark story of Azlon I.
The dark story behind Howard County’s Little Free Libraries.
The dark story of the Howard County Fair.
Image from Visit Howard County, filter changed by author
Do you catch my drift? It doesn’t need to be dark. You just have to want to frame it that way. And maybe people click on these things because they have a secret need to discover something awful about a previously respectable subject.
It’s not hard to see a comparison here with the determined drift of the current owner of the Baltimore Sun or the long time editorial point of view over at Fox 45. If there’s a way to make something they don’t like look cheap or shifty or criminal then they’ll try to sell it to you that way.
That’s not trustworthy journalism any more than these YouTube Dark Side videos are professional documentaries.
Sometimes the truth is dark. But slopping on a coat of sensationalist darkness to get more clicks isn’t revelation. It’s distortion.
It’s easy enough to do with a tendency towards the negative and a variety of dark filters.
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