More tears

Added 1689929267 by Tamsin Ashton.

Emotional states project part 6: Crying

part1

I realised that I was developing a habit. I started watching You Tube “shorts” featuring the grim reaper and cute animals. Every time I did I would cry. I would not cry subtly I would actually screw up my face and sob. This would not stop me the next time I would have the opportunity to watch one. Why was I upsetting myself like that?

I realised how often people use media to elicit strong emotions. Often these are so called negative emotions. Horror movies elicit fear, something that we should be hard wired to avoid. Out of Shakespeare's surviving plays there are almost as many tragedies as comedies. Are people trying to harm themselves by consuming this media? I don't think so. A horror movies often involve supernatural beings and other unreal dangers that don't affect the audience in real life. Thus the audience can experience fear and step away afterwards. There is a scene at the beginning of “Do androids dream of electric sheep?” where one of the characters, Iran uses an emotion machine to schedule six hours of self accusatory depression. Perhaps this is out of boredom, perhaps because happiness seems at odds with her situation. Still the emotion machine can simply make the depression go away at the end. Is the media I found a kind of sadness-porn, something that can elicit a strong feeling of sadness using unreal situations.