Negative emotions are deep and profound. Positive ones are silly and trite. To smile or be happy is the least sexy thing a person can do, and negative articles get a few orders of magnitude more clicks than positive ones.<p>It&#x27;s the old &quot;if you mistake a bush for a lion that&#x27;s fine, but if you mistake a lion for a bush you are dead&quot; cognitive bias. I&#x27;ve thought for a long time that it manifests in art via shock, negativity, outrage, etc. being a cheap route to profundity. You have to work hard to make positive art profound because the bar is higher... you don&#x27;t get the easy free profundity points negativity gives you.