OP-ED: "Schott's Vocab: Pessimism Porn," by Ben Schott, New York Times, 26 March 2009.

Great definition:

Titillating bleak media reports on the state of the economic collapse.

Hugo Lindgen mused on the illicit thrills of bad news in New York magazine: "My wife busted me again the other day. I had slipped away from her and the kids and into the fantasy world of the Web. But not the kind of fantasy you're probably thinking of. This was pessimism porn. A friend had turned me on to a futurist named Gerald Celente, who anticipated the Asian financial crisis and other calamities. Now, Celente says, the U.S. is heading for a middle-class tax revolt, food riots and a Central Park engulfed by shantytowns.

Sound like any sites you frequent?

I made a decision a long time ago not to make my career a bet on bad things happening. I think that approach simply corrodes your strategic thought capacity. Human history is progress, so if you're constantly having to screen out the good to spot the bad, your vision will unduly narrow. If you bet on progress, you can easily contextualize the bad, because progress is never linear. But if you bet on retreat, you must consistently discount advances as "illusions" and "buying time" and so on, and after a while, you're just this broken clock who's dead-on twice a day.

As I've said earlier, porn desensitizes. If you want to dull your senses along with the pain, it's a great way to go, but it narrows the intake capacity. After a while, you're simply blind from all that self-pleasuring.