The death of everything!

I am getting a little tired of reading blog posts and articles proclaiming the “death of this” and the “end of that.” Just a quick Google search turns up the death of beer (The Atlantic), the death of fiction (Mother Jones), the death of the open web (New York Times — actually an article I liked), the end of men (The Atlantic again), the end of the best friend (New York Times again) and the death of the Internet (quite ironic for a video posted on YouTube). Other things rumored to be dead or dying: newspapers, science fiction, the novel, print books and my sense of humor.

This hyperbole makes me weary. It is not really appropriate to proclaim the death of anything until you have actually viewed the corpse. But I often find that articles making such proclamations have very little in the way of real evidence to back up their predictions. Instead, they tend to reach for the worst conclusions based on scant evidence and overblown fears. I’m ashamed of these fine publications for succumbing to wild speculation just to bring in readers.

From now on, I will refuse to read an article that proclaims the death or the end of anything, unless it’s an obituary for an actual living being. I want to read about life, not death.