I believe that people are choosing to experience our alternate, postapocalyptic reality--kind of like picking at a scab. You know you're going to bleed, but you just can't leave it alone.
I used to be obsessed with postapocalyptic fiction--books, movies, you name it. I HAD to read/see each and every one, from the Mad Max movies to The Handmaid's Tale. (Ironically, the only one I never saw was The Day After. Not sure why.) The genre gave me nightmares, but I absorbed it all anyway. I grew up during the nuclear threat, and maybe that was part of it, because for years I simply expected to die in a nuclear blast. I'd spend serious amounts of time deliberating what was the better option--dying instantly, or surviving.
Anyway, once I got far enough along in my spiritual studies to realize that I was helping to manifest the very future I feared, I quit the genre cold turkey, and I felt much better. Didn't miss it in the least, either.
However, I couldn't resist reading The Road--and I wish I had. OMG I was depressed for weeks. Of course, the bit with the little boy didn't help this mommy in the least. It was a very well written book, I will acknowledge, but damn. Needless to say I avoided the movie like the plague.
Now, out of curiosity, I'm reading the Hunger Games trilogy, and I'm examining my reactions objectively as I read. I noticed I tend to empathically absorb the paranoia infused in the books, which is dangerous, so I have to raise my shields before I read and "brush myself off" after I finish. But I'm very happy to report that there is a lot of optimism and hope in the story. I consider it the next generation of postapocalyptic fiction, because it's not the disaster part, and it's not the despair part. It's the fighting back part.
So maybe we'll eventually collectively outgrow the penchant for disaster porn. I hope so.
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