Do you remember bad news always being THIS BAD? Think about bad things that happened in the news a few years ago. (I don’t think I need examples) You saw what happened by watching CNN or picking up your newspaper. Then blogs came up and would post recaps. You could comment and add your 2 cents and you’d be able to find more information by doing a search based on your own interest for the cause.

But now, with Twitter especially, news (and especially BAD NEWS) gets spread around to a point of over exposure almost making the news sound catastrophic.

For example, the latest in celebrity deaths was extremely overwhelming. Farrah Fawcett. Michael Jackson. Billie Mays. Each announcement alone was a shocker in its own right, but when multiple people in your online stream are constantly posting, commenting, tweeting—it makes it even bigger because the news continually repeats right in front of you.

No longer are you able to back away from the news. It follows you everywhere. People are writing about the same things as part of a new news cycle across social media. This continuous repeating of the news makes small things bigger than usual and more important than it really is.

Great example: Yesterday, Tumblr went down for about 30 minutes. You go to Tumblr, it’s down. Fine. I won’t be able to check it out but I can move on with my life and get back to work. You then go and check Twitter and EVERYONE is writing about how Tumblr is down! Alone, it’s not really a big deal but together with a critical mass of content about the same thing: IT’S INSANE.

What do you think? Does social media make things bigger than they really are because of the opportunity to spread it and repeat it?