Algorithms and brain chemistry keep us stuck in loops until we get saturated with doomscrolling and fake news 
 
算法和大脑化学反应让我们陷入循环，直到我们被末日刷屏和虚假新闻饱和
（末日刷屏：指在社交媒体或新闻网站上不断浏览负面、令人沮丧的新闻或信息的行为。）
 
There is a long-brewing malaise that has accelerated sharply since 2024. Scholars call it media fatigue, information overload, or data smog. We are increasingly repelled by the miasma of recycled digital sludge swirling around us. That is the good news – sort of. The bad news is that many cannot see a way out. We cannot “think outside the box” because the box has become us. 
 
一种长期酝酿的不适感自2024年以来急剧加速。学者们称之为媒体疲劳、信息过载或数据迷雾。我们越来越厌恶围绕在我们周围的循环数字垃圾的瘴气。某种程度上这算是个好消息。但坏消息是，许多人看不到出路。我们无法“跳出框框思考”，因为这个框框已经变成了我们自己。
 
Media fatigue and news avoidance 
 
媒体疲劳和新闻回避 
 
Media fatigue predates the internet and is the result of psychological exhaustion from relentless streams of news, posts, and alxs. The web, however, supercharged this phenomenon, accelerating patterns observed by a weary colleague decades ago: “There is nothing new in news anymore.” 
 
媒体疲劳早在互联网出现之前就存在，是由于无休止的新闻、帖子和提醒流导致的心理疲惫。然而，网络极大地放大了这种现象，加速了一个疲惫的同事几十年前观察到的模式：“新闻里已经没有什么新鲜事了。”
 
Fatigue inevitably leads to avoidance. A Reuters Institute study found that in 2023, 39% of people surveyed worldwide generally avoided the news, up from 29% in 2017. In the UK, two in five people say they feel “worn out” by it. 
 
疲劳不可避免地导致回避。路透社研究所的一项研究发现，2023年，全球39%的受访者通常会回避新闻，高于2017年的29%。在英国，五分之二的人表示他们对此感到“筋疲力尽”。
 
News participation is also falling. Between 2015 and 2022, global surveys show a 20-30% drop in activities like sharing, commenting, and discussing news. Comment sections, once messy but vibrant, have in many cases collapsed into mindless recriminations, devoid of gravitas or insight. This is partly due to another factor, as the next section illustrates. 
 
新闻参与度也在下降。2015年至2022年间，全球调查显示，分享、评论和讨论新闻等活动的参与率下降了20-30%。评论区曾经虽然杂乱但充满活力，如今在许多情况下已沦为毫无意义的指责，缺乏分量或洞见。这部分原因将在下一节中说明。
 
Is AI driving us all insane? 
 
人工智能在让我们所有人发疯吗？ 
 
Ensconced trolls 
 
盘踞的网络喷子 
 
Trolls come in many breeds: the insecure, the self-validating, the ideologue, and the hired gun. Some are simply paid to sink the conversation – to smear the source, derail the thread, and leave nothing but wreckage in the comments box. Overall, they are akin to relentless parasites seeking one host after another. 
 
网络喷子有多种类型：缺乏安全感的、寻求自我肯定的、意识形态驱动的，以及雇佣兵。有些人只是受雇来破坏对话——抹黑信息来源，扰乱话题，只在评论区留下废墟。总体来说，他们就像不懈的寄生虫，不断寻找一个又一个宿主。
 
Recently, after weeks of hesitation, I finally published an article challenging the false equivalence between Palestine and Kashmir, and questioning why Israel panics over Iran’s phantom nukes while ignoring Pakistan’s 170-180 real ones. 
 
最近，在犹豫数周后，我终于发表了一篇文章，挑战巴勒斯坦与克什米尔之间的错误类比，并质疑为什么以色列对伊朗虚构的核武器惊慌失措，却忽视了巴基斯坦170-180枚真实的核武器。
 
The comments section soon became a battlefield. A Pakistani commenter unleashed a semi-literate barrage cataloguing India’s “war crimes” in Kashmir. I dexed the first two comments. Then came the pro-Zionist troll, slinging nonsense accusations. Oddly, neither turned on the other, despite their otherwise inimical religious and geopolitical ideologies. (You can see the screenshot here). 
 
评论区很快就变成了战场。一名巴基斯坦评论者发表了一连串半文盲式的攻击，列举印度在克什米尔的“战争罪行”。我删除了前两条评论。接着来了一个亲犹太复国主义的喷子，抛出一堆荒谬的指控。奇怪的是，尽管他们的宗教和地缘政治意识形态本应水火不容，但他们并未互相攻击。（你可以在这里看到截图）。
 
That is the troll MO: drive out the thoughtful, drain the oxygen, and dumb down the public square. They don’t just kill conversation, they shrink attention spans and fertilize the soil for fake news to grow faster and fouler. 
 
这就是喷子的惯用手法：驱逐深思熟虑的人，耗尽氧气，降低公共广场的水平。他们不仅扼杀对话，还缩短人们的注意力跨度，为虚假新闻的更快、更恶劣的传播提供沃土。
 
From fake news to phonier news 
 
从虚假新闻到更虚假的新闻 
 
With a shorter attention span, younger generations, especially Gen Z, are jettisoning traditional news outlets for short-form content on TikTok, YouTube, and Instagram. The cure has its own poison. 
 
随着注意力跨度的缩短，年轻一代，尤其是Z世代，放弃了传统新闻媒体，转向TikTok、YouTube和Instagram上的短视频内容。这种解药本身也带有毒性。
 
Case in point: I recently searched YouTube for “Burkina Faso, aircraft” to gauge the pace of the revitalized nation’s infrastructural development. The top results? 
 
举个例子：我最近在YouTube上搜索“布基纳法索，飞机”，想了解这个复兴国家的基础设施发展速度。搜索结果的头条是什么？
 
（Traoré Shocks the World as He Unveils First Ever African ‘MADE IN BURKINA’ AirPlane 
 
特拉奥雷震惊世界，他揭开了非洲首架“布基纳制造”飞机的面纱
 
Aviation News: Burkina Faso Builds and Launches Its Own Aircraft!
 
航空新闻：布基纳法索建造并发射了自己的飞机！）
 
To be clear, these videos, and others like them about “Burkina Faso’s first domestically-produced plane,” bear the obvious markings of phony “news coverage” – both the scxts and the voices are AI-generated, and all the images used are archive footage, without any sign of the “indigenous aircraft” in sight. Even this should be enough to alx a casual viewer, who will not take the time and make the effort to check other sources. 
 
需要明确的是，这些视频以及其他关于“布基纳法索首架国产飞机”的类似视频，带有明显的虚假“新闻报道”痕迹——脚本和声音都是人工智能生成的，所有使用的图像都是存档镜头，完全看不到所谓“国产飞机”的踪影。即使是这样，普通观众也应该能察觉到异常，但他们不会花时间和精力去核查其他来源。
 
Those who do would find that the entire story is fake – Burkina Faso has not, in fact, begun producing airplanes domestically. The closest news of the sort comes from last year, when the country restarted its national airline and acquired a new plane to bring its total fleet to four. 
 
那些核查的人会发现整个故事都是假的——事实上，布基纳法索并未开始国内生产飞机。相关的最近新闻是去年该国重启了国家航空公司，并购置了一架新飞机，使其机队总数达到四架。
 
Yet, these and other videos about Burkina Faso’s supposed home-made plane together have garnered hundreds of thousands of views, thousands of likes and hundreds of adoring, unquestioning comments. 
然而，这些关于布基纳法索所谓国产飞机的视频总共获得了数十万次观看、数千个点赞和数百条盲目崇拜、不加质疑的评论。
 
AI hallucinations: A budding sentience or a global embarrassment? 
 
人工智能幻觉：初生的意识还是全球的尴尬？ 
 
Are we this naive? 
 
我们有这么天真吗？ 
 
Have people marinated in misinformation for so long that they cannot function without jumping from the kettle of fake news into the frying pan of even phonier news? Is this a kind of mental withdrawal that requires a steady fix of digital dung to maintain a false sense of comfort? 
 
人们在虚假信息的浸泡中待了太久，以至于他们无法正常运作，非得从虚假新闻的锅里跳到更虚假的新闻的煎锅里？这是不是一种心理戒断症状，需要持续摄入数字垃圾来维持虚假的舒适感？
 
Even animals that consume feces – pigs, elephants, tapirs, warthogs — do so for nutritional benefit in circumstances of scarcity. In contrast, humans seem happy to consume intellectual waste for no benefit at all. 
 
即使是吃粪便的动物——猪、大象、貘、疣猪——也是在资源匮乏的情况下为了营养而这样做。相比之下，人类似乎乐于消费毫无益处的智力垃圾。
 
Not only has Burkina Faso not built an aircraft that “shocked Boeing, Airbus and the world,” even if seven of the top eight YouTube results claimed otherwise – only two nations have ever developed a fully independent aerospace ecosystem: the United States and the Soviet unx (and lately Russia). Even China’s most advanced fighter jets still rely on modified Russian engines even as rapid progress is being made on domestic alternatives. 
 
布基纳法索不仅没有制造出“震惊波音、空中客车和全世界”的飞机，即使YouTube前八个搜索结果中有七个声称如此——历史上只有两个国家建立了完全独立的航空航天生态系统：美国和苏联（以及最近的俄罗斯）。即使是中国最先进的战斗机，仍然依赖于改良的俄罗斯引擎，尽管国内替代品正在迅速进展。
 
Causes of gullibility 
 
轻信的原因 
 
The brain finds safety in repetition because familiar patterns demand less mental effort and carry no uncertainty. This lowers vigilance, and each repetition reinforces neural pathways, delivering a small, reliable dopamine drip. Comfort beats novelty every time. 
 
大脑在重复中寻找安全感，因为熟悉的模式需要较少的心理努力且没有不确定性。这降低了警惕性，每次重复都会强化神经通路，带来小而可靠的多巴胺分泌。舒适感总是战胜新奇感。
 
Platforms exploit this with algorithms that feed familiar material, locking users into a “repetition comfort loop” where predictability trumps reality checks. This can lead to zombie scrolling where one loops through the same or similar content without seeking anything new. Doomscrolling, at least, hunts for fresh disasters, much like a risk consultant is hooked on threat analysis. 
平台利用算法提供熟悉的内容，将用户锁定在“重复舒适循环”中，在这种循环中，可预测性胜过现实核查。这可能导致“僵尸滚动”，即用户反复浏览相同或类似的内容而不寻求新事物。末日滚动至少还在寻找新的灾难，就像风险顾问沉迷于威胁分析一样。
 
Perhaps the truly curious have already abandoned YouTube and similar platforms as serious news sources. They retreat to trusted, bookmarked outlets – many now buried under algorithmic slime – leaving newcomers adrift in a clickbait ocean. If so, the digital divide will widen further. And that is bad news for the next generation. 
 
或许真正好奇的人已经放弃了YouTube和类似平台作为严肃新闻来源。他们退回到可信的、已收藏的媒体——许多如今被算法的泥沼所掩埋——留下新来者在点击诱饵的海洋中漂泊。如果是这样，数字鸿沟将进一步扩大。这对下一代来说是个坏消息。
 
Rebellion or saturation? 
 
反叛还是饱和？ 
 
Global media consumption has risen for decades, but analysts predict the first decline in 2025. Maybe we are finally hitting saturation. Maybe some are quietly rebelling, worn down by cognitive overload. Overexposure makes us skim instead of think, and chase the sensational over the substantive. And right now, garbage is winning the war for attention 
 
几十年来，全球媒体消费一直在上升，但分析师预测2025年将首次下降。或许我们终于达到了饱和点。或许有些人在认知超载的压迫下正在悄然反叛。过度暴露让我们浏览而非思考，追逐耸人听闻而非实质内容。目前，垃圾正在赢得注意力之战。
 
Hooked on the blue glow? Switch it off. Walk in the dark. Let your brain detox from the loop – because in a dumbed-down world, the most rebellious act is to think. 
 
迷恋于蓝光的闪烁？关掉它。走进黑暗。让大脑从循环中解毒——因为在一个被愚化的世界里，最叛逆的行为就是思考。