If you, like me, are a bit sick and tired and heading towards overwhelmed by all the bad news stories we have to take in online [from mass killings in Nigeria to dead cartoonists to children in schools re-enacting dog fights to live cattle being attacked in a turned over truck] then we should do something about it.
There is so much to be done, and it can overwhelm, but ONE THING that can start the ball rolling in the right direction, is for us to get less sharey with the negative stuff and up our virality on the GOOD NEWS front.
In the shell of a really big nut, SHARE MORE OF THE GOOD NEWS STORIES.
It is not like they are not out there. It’s just that we tend to gravitate towards the bad, the negative, the sensational.
Who do you know who is doing good? Get them to guest post their story on your blog or Facebook wall or tweet a link to their blog on your Twitterer feed. Let’s put the good stuff front and center.
For example, i see a story on Facebook of a young entrepreneur, 23-year-old Veli Moses Mackenzie, in Johannesburg who is standing at the traffic lights asking for money [a typical thing in many of the cities in South Africa] except that his ask is a little different:
For R1 [less than ten American cents] i will teach you one word in my language [Zulu].
Dubbed the Jozi Traffic Light teacher, his story goes viral along with the hashtag #trafficlightteacher and the next day i read about him being awarded a bursary to follow his dream by studying audio technology.
The ask continued to the public as:
‘Moses is now in need of finding suitable accommodation, and Jacaranda has asked for any help regarding this matter. Moses currently lives under a bridge and sleeps in an old television box near his Empire road ‘office’.’
The more viral we can make GOOD NEWS, the more news outlets will see the value of reporting it and the more stories like this will start coming out. Also the less we feed on the bad news, the less the call for it and the more the media will shift to telling good news stories.
It is a supply and demand business – and what we demand, they will supply. The obstacle is obviously the fewness of people sharing the good stuff and so this does need to become a movement.
SHARE THIS BLOG POST for example. Write your own on a similar vein. And start passing on those stories of good.
One wonders if there would be any correlation to teenage school shootings, for example, if we gave them no media attention at all [anonymity instead of fame?]
And in fact, there are many people who are already doing this. Do you know of a group or site or place where we can easily find the GOOD NEWS stories? Please leave your links in the comments.
eg. http://www.goodnewsnetwork.org or @good on the Twitterer
Where else do we find the good news?
Was *just* reading about the traffic light teacher. What a great story! Would love to see him get accommodation now, as well.
I’m so for sharing more of the good news. (In fact, we have a column called Good News for Girls on SheLoves every month.)
More good news? Yes, please!
Why not invite him to come live with you?
That totally sounds like the kind of thing we would gladly do except the transit fees would probably kill him, seeing as his course is up in Joburg and we live in Cape Town… hopefully someone up there will do just that though.
I signed up to the mailing list of http://www.sagoodnews.co.za/ a while back. Don’t always read it, but when I spot a catchy headline or an interesting looking article, then I’m always encouraged 🙂
Love it, thankx. More people, more.
Btw, the reason I actually went looking for good news sites like that one, is two-fold:
1) You, Brett, encouraged us a while back (possible a few times) on your blog to spread good news instead of bad news – so I have you to thank!!
2) I found that certain friends and family around me were (and in some cases still are) SO fixated (almost unhealthily) on the bad/sensational news. It really affects the people around them. So I decided to “counter” their sharing of bad news, with my sharing of good news 🙂
Ah i love it Kevin. If i knew anyone was paying attention i might have done it even more often.
Who wants to learn Zulu words? It’s a dying language that can’t be used anywhere but natal. R1 could go towards takeout.
I doubt the zulus would see it as a dying language. Most black South Africans speak three or more languages and it’s high time us white folks started learning some of theirs.
YES! Finally – a brilliant suggestion for perennial armchair activists like myself!
Damned fine suggestion!
Just as a start, Dave. It HAS to move to action for sure…
Agreed, but that first action of not disseminating negativity is the paradigm shift I am looking for.
[…] wrote a post that struck a chord with me. In ‘Let There Be Good!‘ he talks about all the horror stories out there – Charlie, Boko, livestock being […]
Been encouraging my congregation for the last two weeks to share good news stories! #synchronicity
Niice!