Why do we have so many hysterical people in society today?

If you look at old news footage even 20-30 years ago most of the time people are relatively chill.

If you go 100 years back people are reallyyyy chill, just like “then I was in the war and I killed 100 men, then I was shot through the left eye, then I came home and married my high school sweetheart but she died due to diphtheria. Then I got in a car crash and lost both my legs, but overall I can’t complain”

It’s actually pretty rare to see someone overwhelmed to the point of hysterical shrieking, yet on the internet it’s extremely common place.

I don’t think this is because life is harder now. If anything, it’s objectively easier, safer, and more comfortable than at almost any other point in history.

What has changed is how emotion is rewarded.

Today, emotional dysregulation gets attention, validation, amplification, and sometimes even status. Calm, restraint, and proportional reactions don’t go viral. Hysteria does. Outrage does. Collapse does.

We’ve also externalized resilience. Instead of learning how to regulate discomfort internally, people are taught that every emotional spike deserves immediate external response agreement, soothing, outrage on their behalf.

So you end up with a culture where being overwhelmed isn’t a temporary state to move through, it’s an identity to perform.

And once hysteria becomes a social currency, you start seeing a lot more of it.