The Tragedy of Endless Consumption

From outrage to apathy: The dehumanizing power of media saturation

We were told that information would set us free—that exposure to the harsh realities of life would help us understand the world, react, and act. What they didn’t tell us is that this constant, unrelenting exposure would eventually numb us. Violence and the suffering of others stopped being an event that shakes, interrupts, and demands a response. The exposure and consumption of other people’s misery became background noise. A routine. An aesthetic to be consumed.

The image of a mother crying next to the body of her child appears on our screens between a quick recipe video and one of a dog doing something funny. A swipe of the finger and life goes on. A humanitarian disaster, a personal tragedy, a systemic injustice: everything is presented with the same aim as viral content. When violence and human pain is broadcast live as if it were a sporting event, when desperation nourishes a trend, when the mourning of others turns into an opportunity to get more clicks, what remains for us to feel?

The numbing effect of repeated exposure to suffering is a process in which images or stories of pain reduce the emotional and cognitive response to these stimuli. Studies like those by Bushman and Anderson (2009) have shown that frequent consumption of shocking images correlates with reduced activation in brain regions associated with empathy and emotional processing. This is not an individual failure but a brain adaptation which is used as a control mechanism. Our minds, designed to prioritize immediate threats, malfunction under the bombardment of global tragedies and choose to disconnect. And when we disconnect, we also stop asking questions.

Media and governments are not victims: they are its architects. In contexts of humanitarian crises, wars, or structural poverty, overexposure to testimonies of suffering creates a similar effect: the perception of pain loses impact, and the ability to respond is diminished. What initially provoked indignation or social mobilization becomes a constant background noise, devoid of practical consequences.

None of this happens by chance. It’s not that society has spontaneously decided to become indifferent. It’s that this emotional numbing is useful. No one in power benefits from a population that truly reacts to injustice, that not only observes suffering but questions it. That doesn’t just record it but rejects it. A society constantly bombarded is a paralyzed one. That’s why the suffering of others represents an ongoing spectacle, an incessant barrage of images that shock us for an instant before being replaced by the next—so briefly that the rational brain doesn’t evenhave time to assess it. There’s no time to process, to understand, to act. Only to look, consume, and forget.

Related to this emotional detachment, compassion fatigue is a phenomenon studied in trauma psychology and professional care. Figley (1995) defines this concept as the emotional exhaustion that occurs when people are repeatedly exposed to the suffering of others. This effect has been documented in healthcare workers, journalists, and activists, but also in the general audience continuously exposed to global crises. Compassion fatigue has direct consequences on collective action: when emotional exhaustion surpasses the ability to respond, commitment to social and humanitarian causes decreases. According to a study by Kinnick, Krugman, and Cameron (1996), the repeated consumption of negative news can generate a state of learned helplessness, in which people stop perceiving the possibility of changing their environment.

We like to believe that we still possess the capacity for outrage, that injustice still moves us, that we truly feel. And we do—within the confines set for us, at the precise intensity we're permitted. Social media has turned indignation into a performance, a hollow ritual where anger flares up briefly, then fades just as fast. A condemning tweet, a dramatic image, a furious comment on a forum, and we’ve done our part. The next day, a new tragedy, a new victim. Indignation is recycled, always applied to the next crisis, following the same predictable pattern.

The impact of these processes is not only individual but structural. Societies that have normalized high levels of others' suffering tend to show a lower capacity to respond to humanitarian crises or human rights violations. As Chouliaraki (2006) points out, the media have developed narratives that aestheticize pain, turning it into a consumable spectacle without real political consequences. Byung-Chul Han, in The Burnout Society (2010), adds that this saturation is not a mistake: it’s a strategy of governments who prefer an exhausted citizenry rather than an organized one. Impotence is not only an effect of overexposure: it is its goal.

This dynamic reinforces existing power structures by diminishing collective sensitivity, which in turn makes social organization and protest more difficult. As the threshold for tolerating suffering increases, crises that should prompt immediate responses often dissolve in the saturation of information.

Behind this mechanism is a business model that feeds off our attention, our addiction to constant stimulation. Suffering has become an industry. Pain sells. Misery generates traffic. Tragedy is profitable. The more heartbreaking the headline, the more graphic the image, the higher the number of visits and likes. And in this game, the victims don’t matter. Their story doesn’t matter. Every click validates the next blow of media exploitation.

Human pain and violence has become a resource, an exploitable commodity. News outlets need constant crises to keep us glued to the screen. Platforms need shocking images for us to keep scrolling. Governments need visible enemies to justify repressive policies. And we, trapped in this cycle, keep watching, more and more numb, more and more convinced that the world is a hostile, unyielding void where agency dissolves.

Because that’s the real goal: to convince us that all of this is normal. That images of shattered bodies, desperate refugees, children dying of hunger, are not cause for alarm but part of the reality in which we live. That human suffering is inevitable, that it’s always been this way, and always will be this way.

That horror is landscape. That injustice is immutable.

When we accept this, we stop questioning. We stop asking why some lives are significants and others are not. We stop noticing how information is presented to us, how we are manipulated through selected images, how we are taught to fear and hate as it suits. And when we stop questioning, the system wins. Because an insensitive society doesn’t rebel. It doesn’t demand justice. It doesn’t fight against structural inequality but absorbs it as part of the landscape.

If they can make you asking the wrong questions, they don’t have to worry about answers. (Thomas Pynchon, Gravity’s Rainbow)

Far from being an individual problem, this emotional numbing and compassion fatigue are phenomena with profound political and social implications. If the suffering of others becomes just another piece of media consumption, the capacity for social response is compromised. The key question is not just how constant exposure to pain and violence affect us, but who benefits from our indifference.

Zygmunt Bauman, in Liquid Modernity (1999), already warned how the uncertainty inherent in modern societies has undone human bonds, fragmenting our sense of community and our capacity for commitment. In a liquid world, where relationships and commitments are temporary, empathy becomes a commodity that is sold and consumed quickly, without time to develop a lasting connection. In this context, this emotional detachment is not an accident: it’s a feature of our liquid age, where the speed of information and stimulus saturation make each suffering just another in the long list of tragedies we overlook before moving on to the next.

This numbing effect is not just a psychological or emotional phenomenon. It’s a powerful mean in structuring collective apathy, which facilitates the consolidation of power systems that depend on the indifference of the masses. As a result, suffering and violence are normalized, becomes part of the landscape, and real change becomes a mirage.

This detachment is not an accident: it’s an alibi. Consider how, in the United States, the opioid crisis was initially framed as a 'crisis of individual addictions,' without adequately addressing the role of major pharmaceutical companies like Purdue Pharma, which spent millions on advertising campaigns that downplayed their own responsibility. This media manipulation shifted attention away from the structural causes of the crisis, allowing the suffering to be quickly labeled and displaced by the next sensational headline.

In situations like these, the media don’t just inform; they actively shape a narrative that fragments suffering, breaking it into consumable pieces that are easily consumed, leaving no room for reflection or action. By isolating each tragedy and presenting it as a separate incident, the possibility of a collective response that challenges the power structures behind it is avoided.

This is not irreversible.

We can choose to stop—to demand media literacy, to organize collectively, to reject algorithmic fatalism—look tragedy in the face, and ask ourselves what we are doing with it. Empathy is not a commodity but an act of resistance.