What People Want

A California man is suing a psychic who he says falsely claimed she could remove a curse put on his marriage by a witch hired by his ex-girlfriend.
US man sues psychic who 'promised to remove ex-girlfriend curse'

This, for me, is a clear illustration of the phenomenon of "news as entertainment." While there may be something about this story that points to a something interesting and newsworthy about American society, I'm not sure that this 250-word piece from the BBC actually gets at any of it. There's certainly nothing that one can take action on in the story. While I'm not sure that a source that appears to take itself as seriously as the BBC would ever implement a "News of the Weird" or "Fluff" section, that's really where this story belongs. It's a moderately interesting diversion, nothing more.

Of course, the BBC is in something of a bind here. Because, lets face it, the reason why someone made the decision to run with this story was that person decided that it would be good for page-views. After all, the BBC does run advertising. And a corollary to giving the people what they want is calling it what they want it to be called. For all that people may advise otherwise, human beings have a tendency to place conditions on their own self-esteem. And, as a result, people can be fairly reliably counted on to gravitate towards things that confirm that they are acting within the conditions that they set for themselves.

And so the BBC doesn't label as such a story that is little more than random gossip about a man who believes in the supernatural to a greater degree than people in developed Western nations are "supposed" to. This story, rather than delving into the cultural makeup of the United States and interrogating the degree to which beliefs in things like psychic powers and witchcraft exist and are tied to certain cultural forces and/or groups, is a short "puff piece" that reads like an invitation to point and laugh at a foolish man who was blatantly hoodwinked by an obvious charlatan. And while "point and laugh" media does nothing for me, personally, it's a pretty big business, if the number of cable and streaming television shows that appear to hold their subjects up as objects of derision is any indication.

I don't know if there is anything to be done to help people become more at ease with the people who that are, and less concerned with presenting themselves as who they feel they should be. Exhortations for people to "be authentic" or "bring their 'genuine selves' to work" seem hollow in societies that appear to regard telling people "you're different, and that's bad" as something of a national pastime.

And perhaps that's the irony of this story. It holds up a man to scrutiny for being out-of-step with the picture of what a modern American should be, while allowing the reader to hide from the fact that they're perhaps being less serious in their news consumption than they believe a modern educated Westerner should be.