how desensitised have you become?

Robsweezie · 18-05-2015 11:45PM #1

Reading grim stories in the paper, seeing them on the news, people dying in car crashes, murders, random stabbings, assaults. I find myself almost numb to them, like they've become a daily accepted part of life, that people will die and that's that. It's a defence mechanism I've built up to avoid becoming too emotionally caught up in individual cases. I give these stories a moment's notice, sigh, express my condolences and move on, grateful it wasn't me. How do you process all the tragedy and brutality of the world? Do you still feel affected or do you "switch off"?

4zn76tysfajdxp · 18-05-2015 11:47PM

Robsweezie wrote: »

How do you process all the tragedy and brutality of the world? Do you still feel affected or do you "switch off"?

Turns me on, if anything.

Mmmmm... misery.

Tony Beetroot · 18-05-2015 11:47PM

I have enough problems myself without taking on the worlds ones.

Mint Aero · 18-05-2015 11:51PM

I think it's normal to be "desensitised" to these things as you put it. Otherwise you're a cotton wool wrapped candy cane not exposed to anything to be desensitised to yet. Sure people be sword fighting and brawling to death over a cup of tea little over a century ago and you wouldn't bat an eyelid. No point getting too soft in a so called civilised world. Best keep your toes in the pie.

MightyMandarin · 18-05-2015 11:55PM

You want desensitized? Go on /b/ on 4chan for an hour and it'll scare you how desensitized you'll become to seeing the weirdest, most disgusting sh*t out there.

beks101 · 19-05-2015 12:00AM

I think it's a pretty important survival mechanism. If you walked around devastated at every tragic story you heard/read/watched on the news, you'd be pretty crap at this whole living thing.

I work in a newsroom so I have no soul and measure the scale of tragedy by how many westerners died and how badly that is going to affect my working day.

Robsweezie · 19-05-2015 12:01AM

MightyMandarin wrote:

You want desensitized? Go on /b/ on 4chan for an hour and it'll scare you how desensitized you'll become to seeing the weirdest, most disgusting sh*t out there.

Like what??? Not sure I want to look :-o

Fleawuss · 19-05-2015 12:03AM

It's Gods mysterious will. Allah Al akbar. Shanti Shanti Shanti. Krishna. Om. Etc etc etc.

MightyMandarin · 19-05-2015 12:06AM

Robsweezie wrote: »

Like what??? Not sure I want to look :-o

D*cks; lots and lots of d*cks. Some gory sh*t too.

Personally, I don't think it's too bad, but that's probably because I've been on there too much. There are some very, very weird people on there.

Ally Dick · 19-05-2015 12:08AM

I have always viewed life as an inexplicable bonus. Therefore I am quids in already. I can't wallow in the misery, even though I sympathise with people who are having problems

fleet_admiral · 19-05-2015 12:11AM

Had a shower a couple of hours ago so I feel pretty sanitised, thanks for asking op

Nunu · 19-05-2015 12:16AM

MightyMandarin wrote: »

You want desensitized? Go on /b/ on 4chan for an hour and it'll scare you how desensitized you'll become to seeing the weirdest, most disgusting sh*t out there.

**** sake! Had a gander there. Gif of some poor bloke on a subway track. Never again!

john the one · 19-05-2015 12:17AM

Very desensitized. Can watch all sorts of **** anytime of day.

Mind you I felt a Lil sick seeing Marilyn Manson ****ing Juice in sons of anarchy.

bodice ripper · 19-05-2015 12:18AM

Comfortably.

Stinjy · 19-05-2015 02:02AM

I think with the amount of news of this kind it's normal to be desensitised to seeing it on the news but you wouldn't be if you saw it first hand ...
If every horrible news story affected us we'd never watch the news...

eternal · 19-05-2015 03:24AM

Robsweezie wrote: »

Reading grim stories in the paper, seeing them on the news, people dying in car crashes, murders, random stabbings, assaults. I find myself almost numb to them, like they've become a daily accepted part of life, that people will die and that's that. It's a defence mechanism I've built up to avoid becoming too emotionally caught up in individual cases. I give these stories a moment's notice, sigh, express my condolences and move on, grateful it wasn't me. How do you process all the tragedy and brutality of the world? Do you still feel affected or do you "switch off"?

With the advent of technology, people have become more immune to world horror. Going back to the 1980s and X rated movies, these would be scoffed at now. Pornography is widely available to anyone with internet access whereas before it was the local lads with the 'dirty mags'. Atrocity has become widely publicised to the point where babies being raped mentioned on journo links on Facebook have smartass teens tagging each other with smiley faces. We have to cushion ourselves against the constant devastation by creating a humour or ignorance towards it. The truth of society has become synonymous with consistent barbaric happenings. Such major sociological events as The Holocaust would have been censored mainly in papers and on broadcasts during the War. It is only now that we realise the effects of these occurrences and try to reason it with discussion and thought. It is only after that the realisation really sinks in.

catallus · 19-05-2015 03:57AM

Nunu wrote: »

**** sake! Had a gander there. Gif of some poor bloke on a subway track. Never again!

God bless 4Chan!

jacksie66 · 19-05-2015 04:33AM

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crazygeryy · 19-05-2015 07:33AM

Most things i can tolerate but rarely can i tolerate abuse to animals or stories of it.

Balmed Out · 19-05-2015 07:43AM

Used to be fairly desensitized but since we had our first kid im a whimpering emotional wreck. I have the turn the tv channel if there's a story about a sick or dying child, cant handle it.

hairyslug · 19-05-2015 07:50AM

I move on from everything fairly quickly (as long as it doesn't personally affect me)
But i dont go searching the net to look for weird **** to freak me out

Grayson · 19-05-2015 08:01AM

Depends on what you mean by desensitized.
I've seen some messed up stuff on the web. I won't go looking for and will actively avoid stuff like beheading videos.

At the same time I don't avoid news. I read a couple of papers a day. And I am horrified by what's happening in the world. I'm always shocked when I see people with a "Fcuk em" attitude to people who are floating in the med, or have ebola or are starving in africa.

The lack of empathy of some people is what shocks me the most.

mocha please! · 19-05-2015 08:02AM

Nunu wrote: »

**** sake! Had a gander there. Gif of some poor bloke on a subway track. Never again!

There's worse on Boards. I can't link as I'm a "new" user, but try searching for "man hit by train nsfw" ... That f*cked me up for life. Utterly desensitised to everything after that.

Massimo Cassagrande · 19-05-2015 08:13AM

I think were kidding ourselves. We've become (here in the first world anyway) massively sensitised to almost everything - imagine rounding up a gaggle of current 19 year olds and sending them off to fight in the trenches of ww1 for example, or asking your average metropolitan hipster to slaughter a chicken for his dinner..or go to burn and pillage the neighbouring village and bring back both their heads and their women...they would, yeah..

Maybe on the "looking at upsetting stuff on a screen" front we're desensitised, but I doubt there has ever been such a generation of handwringing mollies on many other fronts. Confront most people with a blocked toilet these days and you'll soon see how sensitive we've actually become...

redbel05 · 19-05-2015 02:52PM

Had you asked me last week, I would have totally said yes, I am desensitized to other peoples misery. But then I witnessed a cyclist getting knocked down by the car in front of me while driving home from work. He was badly bruised and concussed but ok in the end. However I was completely shook by the whole incident and it has played on my mind every time I get in the car since.

Adamantium · 19-05-2015 03:28PM

Massimo Cassagrande wrote: »

I think were kidding ourselves. We've become (here in the first world anyway) massively sensitised to almost everything - imagine rounding up a gaggle of current 19 year olds and sending them off to fight in the trenches of ww1 for example, or asking your average metropolitan hipster to slaughter a chicken for his dinner..or go to burn and pillage the neighbouring village and bring back both their heads and their women...they would, yeah..

Maybe on the "looking at upsetting stuff on a screen" front we're desensitised, but I doubt there has ever been such a generation of handwringing mollies on many other fronts. Confront most people with a blocked toilet these days and you'll soon see how sensitive we've actually become...

I might print this out for my sanity. We're so inoculated it's so ****ing ridiculous. More importantly when something terrible happens we don't know how to deal with it.

You just want to tell them "get over yourself and stop ignoring your own problems". People let it fester and incubate.

PizzamanIRL · 19-05-2015 03:47PM

I see the headlines as "X kills Y amount of people using Z" and I feel for them and move to the next page without reading it. I see it so often I don't want to read it. I don't want negative news, especially about stuff that happens so often and that I basically can't do anything about it.

So yeah I've become a bit desensitized.

jacksie66 · 19-05-2015 09:48PM

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Kwiecien · 20-05-2015 01:07PM

2001. The year i turned from semi cynic to full on disaffected.

9/11, 3 pals died in seperate accidents, mother in law had a heart attack, 2 of my husbands aunts died, foot and mouth disease, etc. I was involved in a car accident that year but luckily nobody was hurt.

Now I'm a good bit older and nothing really upsets me on the news. We were shown dying children on tv back in 1984, i asked my mam would santy bring them food and she didn't answer. i knew there and then at 8 years old the world was a bad place full of lies.

Tsunamis, earthquakes, floods etc, while tragic, i never shed a tear.

Brancott · 20-05-2015 01:20PM

The trick is to let Comedy/Sport Relief record for a good hour before hitting play.
That way you can FF x30 through the real life sob stories & actually enjoy the thing.

Malari · 20-05-2015 01:43PM

I don't think I was ever sensitized to start with.

how desensitised have you become?

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