Fear & Anger & No Sex

Now isn’t THAT a scary and depressing title?

It came to me while reviewing my LinkedIn blog readership statistics. I opened the e-mail with trepidation. What if NO ONE was reading my posts? We live in this weird digital society where people ignoring you online carries as much weight (maybe even more) than people ignoring you in the real world. Some people’s egos are all wrapped up in the number of Facebook LIKES and Twitter followers they have. “And oh look OMG! Someone just liked my Instagram pic of my cup of soup, which I applied a filter and caption to. That must mean I’m popular.” (I actually did post a filtered picture of my cup of Hale & Hearty soup the other day…just as an experiment. It got more than 30 LIKES.) But I digress (as I often do)…

What was most interesting is that my blog posts with fear and anger in the titles attracted the most readers. Is that because they are provocative? Is it because people are fearful and angry? Or is it because I illustrated them with violent pictures?

People seem to love being scared, according to Vanity Fair. The Walking Dead returned for a new season last night. (Last season’s finale was watched by a record 15.8 million viewers.) If you haven’t yet had your fill of zombies and ghouls, you could watch all of the 60 top horror films streaming on Netflix.

Digital media makes finding a local fright much easier too. You can find a scary place (like a haunted house) near you on Hauntworld.

We are wired to process fear differently. Some folks like puppies and kittens and others like bloody zombies with their faces chewed off. According to the Atlantic, “One of the main hormones released during scary and thrilling activities is dopamine, and it turns out some individuals may get more of a kick from this dopamine response than others do.”

According to WebMD, being terrified is better than sex for some people. Now that’s a scary thought.