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

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. It's the old "if you mistake a bush for a lion that's fine, but if you mistake a lion for a bush you are dead" cognitive bias. I'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't get the easy free profundity points negativity gives you.