“Mean world syndrome” was a theory developed in the 1970s by a professor of communications named George Gerbner. Gerbner argued that the more media people consumed, the more likely they were to believe that the world was a dangerous place; in the decades since, a number of studies have borne out Gerbner’s conclusions. Mean world syndrome is one exp

As legal scholar Michelle Alexander outlines in The New Jim Crow, her bestselling account of the War on Drugs and its impact on the criminal justice system, more black men are currently under correctional control in the United States than were enslaved in 1850.

Miniatures are satisfying not because they are grand, but because they are exact. “It is the accuracy, the rightness, that is so rewarding,” according to writer Alice Gregory. “It is a relief . . . to be in the presence of precision—and be allowed to like it.”

Rather, a crush is a way to take up space, and to make something about yourself known to the world.

Yet there are so many ways that people can mess things up, so many ways our human tendencies toward bias, sloppiness, error, and fraud can get in the way. Ultimately, we’re such bad detectives, at least by the standards of my young self. We haven’t figured out how to see without being seen. We’re far from all-powerful. We fail at omniscience. Even

Dollhouses are an almost too-literal example of these women’s shrunken ambitions—of how, when you don’t have control over the big decisions shaping your life, you narrow your focus to a world that’s small enough for you to impose your will on it.

In Bloom’s book, he repeatedly compares empathy to a spotlight: “It makes visible the suffering of others, makes their troubles real, salient, and concrete. From the gloom, something is seen.” But a spotlight is a limited instrument. It illuminates, but only narrowly. Its light is so bright that you can forget how much it leaves in the dark.

they weren’t the only ones warping my sense of reality—it was also the many flavors of online Nazi, the school shooters and the girls who longed to love them, the edgelords and their aggressive brooding, cranky old Ayn Rand—all these various manifestations of a worldview that insisted what mattered most was power, and that getting attention gave yo

I know I’m not the only woman who draws satisfaction from true crime stories that expose the corruption and errors of people in positions of authority—narratives such as that of the West Memphis Three. The shadow side to this, however, is something such as the Satanic Panic, a narrative that was largely advanced by women. The role of the defender,