Perseverance Porn

You’ve seen or heard or read the personal interest story a thousand times: An enterprising seven-year-old collects cans to save for college (ABC7, 2/8/17), a man with unmatched moxie walks 15 miles to his job (Today, 2/20/17), a low-wage worker buys shoes for a kid whose mother can’t afford them (Fox5, 12/14/16), an “inspiring teen” goes right back to work after being injured in a car accident (CBS News, 12/16/16). All heartwarming tales of perseverance in the face of impossible odds—and all ideological agitprop meant to obscure and decontextualize the harsh reality of dog-eat-dog capitalism.

  FAIR

This is akin to making individuals responsible for the planet's survival - recycle, cut down on waste, etc - when it should be a global government effort to reduce pollution and encourage/insist on/subsidize sustainable corporate practices.

In the case of perseverance porn, we get to overlook the fact that a world of haves and have-nots is a world destined to remain a world of hunger, neglect and strife.  How many brilliant minds that could otherwise contribute to human and global advancement are instead being used to simply survive?

[The individuals in the story don't matter. T]heir humanity is irrelevant. They’re clickbait, stand-in bootstrap archetypes meant to validate the bourgeois morality of click-happy media consumers.

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Here we have a story highlighting how society has colossally failed its most vulnerable populations—the poor, ethnic minorities, children and the homeless—and the take-home point is, “Ah gee, look at that scrappy kid.”

Journalism is as much—if not more—about what isn’t reported as what is. Here a local reporter is faced with a cruel example of people falling through the cracks of the richest country on Earth, and their only contribution is to cherry-pick one guy who managed—just barely—to cling on to the edge.

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Perseverance porn goes hand in hand with the rise of a GoFundMe economy that relies on personal narrative over collective policy, emotional appeals over baseline human rights.

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$930 million out of the $2 billion raised on GoFundMe since its inception in 2010 was for healthcare expenses, while an estimated 45,000 people a year die  [...]  due to a lack of medical treatment. Meanwhile, anchors across cable news insist that single-payer healthcare is “unaffordable.”

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It’s part of a broader media culture of [...] moralizing “success” rather than questioning systemic problems.

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After all, if they can do it, so can you—right?

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A healthy press would take these anecdotes of “can do” spirit and ask bigger questions, like why are these people forced into such absurd hardship? Who benefits from skyrocketing college costs? Why does the public transit in this person’s city not have subsidies for the poor? Why aren’t employers forced to offer time off for catastrophic accidents? But time and again, the media mindlessly tells the bootstrap human interest story, never questioning the underlying system at work.

Reminds me of the Democrats (and Republicans too) take after the 2008 financial crash and scandal - bail out the banksters and finance criminals, and tell the public things are not going to get better for a long time, so we need to tighten our belts.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.