The novel coronavirus has changed the ways in which the world functions. People’s lifestyle too has been hugely impacted. There are certain changes that people across the globe have brought in their day to day life as well. In such a scenario, it is obvious that there will be introduction of new terms to describe these never felt before feelings.
So, in order to describe the tendency of continuously surfing through negative news, in a way that you are not able to resist going back to it is called doomscrolling and doomsurfing.
One of the most renowned dictionaries, Merriam Webster in its blog post has kept doomscrolling and doomsurfing in the words we are watching section. “Doomscrolling and doomsurfing are new terms referring to the tendency to continue to surf or scroll through bad news, even though that news is saddening, disheartening, or depressing. Many people are finding themselves reading continuously bad news about COVID-19 without the ability to stop or step back,” read the blogpost.
Emphasising on the origins of the term doomsurfing the blog post stated, “Doom connotes darkness and evil; hence its use in (usually antagonist) character names like Judge Doom (from Who Framed Roger Rabbit), Doctor Doom (The Fantastic Four), and in titles like Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. But the word originally referred to a law or ordinance (especially in Anglo-Saxon England) and later a kind of judgment. (Yes, Judge Doom’s name literally means “Judge Judgment.”) Eventually doom came to refer to one’s fate—particularly the kind for which we’re all headed in some way”.
The word surf or surfing is the commonly used verb for browsing the internet. So, this is how the term doomsurfing came into existence.
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