When Did Pain Become a Marketing Strategy?

The notification arrived at 1:00 PM: a C-suite executive caught cheating, another family crisis about to become content. Within hours, LinkedIn would flood with "leadership lessons" extracted from betrayal. Twitter would fill with hot takes that didn't quite provide anything valuable, and brands, big and small, would start looking for their angle or if they couldn't find one, they'd opt for a meme.

When did we decide human suffering was just another content opportunity?

And what does this generation’s growing desensitisation mean for consumer psychology and for how we build brands in 2025?

The Algorithm Doesn't Pause for Grief

One scroll through social media gives you a founder's emotional breakdown, a wedding celebration, police brutality footage and a gender reveal party.

No matter how much you try to curate your timeline, the algorithm will still serve you trauma alongside your morning coffee. We're living through an "attention recession"not a shortage of content (trust me, there’s plenty of that) but a decline in our ability to focus deeply and give thoughtful consideration on things rather than immediate reaction

And I get it, there are a lot of factors to this. While 2009’s average included general information intake, today’s digital life is more fragmented, with over 5,000 branded messages hitting us daily, from banner ads and push notifications to in-feed posts and product placements, according to Deloitte Digital Democracy Survey, 2024.

This overwhelming influx of information isn't just exhausting, it's changing how we process emotion.

Research tells that 90% of Gen Z surveyed agree they have become desensitised to violence in media content like Instagram reels or violent video games, which reduces their empathetic response over time.

Beyond Gen Z, data from broader generations indicate 43% of consumers feel social media exposure leads to reduced empathy toward tragic events due to normalisation through repeated exposure, according to Method Communications, Stanford.

This collective desensitisation isn’t new, I witnessed an early version of it years ago, not as a consumer, but as a journalist.

My Front-Row Seat to Desensitisation

As a former journalist covering news and crime, I lived this reality professionally and I know I’m not the only one. My job required sourcing stories from social feeds, where images of human tragedy sat alongside celebrity gossip and brand promotions.

I read Met Police reports while checking Twitter for leads and interviewed grieving mothers. I’ve shared before that, during one interview, a mother, overcome with emotion, showed me a photo of her son in the morgue. I didn’t react, she felt she needed to share it. But I carried that image with me for days. I was a trainee journalist at the time, still learning how to hold pain without breaking.

Every police report triggered palpitations. I had lost someone I knew to knife crime and mentored a young boy at risk of gang coercion. Every story felt personal, like it could be someone I knew.

The emotional weight was crushing until self-preservation kicked in. After a panic attack outside Stratford, I subconsciously built barriers to function.

When I asked senior correspondents how they coped with stories like these, the answer was always the same: “I just get on with it.” At first, I found that cold, especially coming from people who hadn’t experienced similar loss. But eventually, I had to get on with it too. With empathy, care, and integrity, but also with distance.

I didn’t realise the toll until I left journalism and actively avoided the news for months. Only then did I understand what constant exposure to trauma had done to my emotional well-being.

I don’t share this for sympathy, I share it because the emotional detachment I developed to survive the news cycle is now something many consumers experience just scrolling social feeds.

Nationwide Facial Recognition Ban Proposed By Lawmakers from @threatpost/Marco Ermini

The Cultural Moment

The recent "Astronomer affair" perfectly shows this disturbing trend. Within 24 hours, a personal betrayal involving real people, a wife children and loved ones became LinkedIn's hottest content opportunity.

HR professionals mined domestic drama for workplace wisdom while marketing strategists dissected betrayal for engagement.

The same brands and executives who'll run mental health awareness campaigns were using the relationship trauma for content. They didn't pause to consider that behind their memes and think pieces were actual people navigating betrayal and public humiliation.

This whole situation revealed something deeply troubling about modern brand behaviour: the compulsive need to extract marketing value from every cultural moment, regardless of relevance, sensitivity, or long-term consequences.

There's this belief that visibility equals value and that being part of every conversation matters more than having something meaningful to contribute. The predictable pattern emerged:

Engagement rates have become the North Star for some brands, creating feedback loops that reward speed and controversy over substance.

When something starts trending, the immediate question becomes "How can we get our piece of this attention?" rather than "Should we?"

This approach shows us that human suffering is acceptable material for marketing campaigns, provided it generates enough clicks. The problem is this approach misunderstands how brand equity is built in a desensitised world.

Many brands have stumbled in recent years, Zara’s war zone-inspired mannequins, H&M’s racially charged product image, Burger King’s poorly worded tweet about women.

These weren’t just cases of bad judgment but one could say they’re symptoms of a deeper issue: desensitisation. When teams are trained to optimise for attention at speed, emotional nuance gets lost.

The line between bold and offensive blurs when trauma, identity, and controversy are just ingredients for content.

This is what happens when people inside brands stop feeling the emotional weight of what they put into the world, not because they’re malicious but because they’re operating in a system that has historically rewarded numbness.

That’s why slowing down, asking harder questions, bringing empathy back into the room, isn’t just a good idea. It’s a brand’s best protection in a desensitised economy.

Who's Really Driving This?

But here's where the analysis gets more complex and uncomfortable. It's easy to frame this as a brand problem, and in many ways it is. But to really understand the desensitisation cycle, we have to ask: Who sets the trends in the first place?

The truth is, consumers often signal what matters through their attention. What gets clicked, shared, quoted, and commented on becomes the algorithm's priority. Brands don't manufacture virality, a lot of them react to it. When the cultural moment taking off is a public breakup, a tragedy, or someone's mental health crisis, brands see the engagement data and think: "This is what people are responding to."

So yes, brands are capitalising. But they're also being shaped by the very audience they're trying to reach. That's what makes this cycle so insidious and so difficult to break.

When brands jump in, they amplify these moments, giving them more visibility and weight. Suddenly, a private experience becomes public spectacle, and a single viral moment becomes the next "content opportunity." This is the point where reaction becomes reinforcement and the desensitisation to other people’s pain spiral deepens.

This makes it even harder to step away. When brands are chasing attention in an economy where attention equals survival, the line between reflection and reaction blurs fast.

But data actually shows that while viral moments generate engagement spikes, only 18% of consumers trust brands to do the right thing during cultural events, according to Edelman Trust Barometer.

We're optimising for metrics that actively erode the trust we need for long-term business success.

This environment doesn't just influence brands, it's reshaping the audience too. When pain becomes performance, consumers begin learning new rules for how to feel, share, and be seen.

The Economics of Survival Content

To understand why brands behave this way, we need to examine the economic desperation driving these decisions.

While over 50 million people worldwide now identify as creators, the creator economy remains highly stratified: about 2 million creators make a full-time income, but the vast majority, 95% of creators, earn less than $5,000 annually, according to SignalFire.

Times are tough for everyone. When job security is myth and gig economy is reality, every cultural moment becomes a potential revenue opportunity. For individuals and brands alike, silence isn't interpreted as thoughtfulness, it's seen as missed economic opportunity.

This creates "survival content culture", when economic downturn meets algorithmic rewards, performance becomes an necessity, not just a social media strategy.

What Are Consumers Learning From This Behaviour?

But when brands consistently commodify human pain for content, they're teaching entire generations dangerous lessons about value and attention: that visibility equals virtue because If brands only speak when something's trending, consumers learn that public performance is more valuable than private integrity.

When trauma becomes content opportunity, people begin viewing their own struggles through the lens of potential virality and when brands reward immediate hot takes over thoughtful responses, consumers learn that first opinions matter more than informed ones.

This leads to consumers expecting brands to "show up" for every cultural moment, conflating visible solidarity with actual support.

These lessons are particularly dangerous for Gen Z and Gen Alpha, who are forming their relationship with emotional intelligence.

This has led to three in four consumers now saying brands are “jumping on trends just to stay relevant,” according to Sprout Social, 2023.

We've created an audience that expects performative engagement while at the same time resenting it a lose-lose dynamic that's unsustainable for everyone involved.

What’s the solution?

I don’t know everything but this is what I do with my clients:

• Before posting, ask: Does this align with our core brand values and expertise?

• Timing assessment: Are we responding or reacting? Can we add genuine value?

• Humanity filter: Would this feel appropriate if we were in the affected person's position?

• Long-term impact: Will this build or erode trust with our core audience?

• Strategic silence: Sometimes the most powerful brand action is no action. Silence isn't irrelevance, it's intentionality.

• Behind-the-scenes support: Donate, volunteer, or support without broadcasting. Let actions speak louder than posts.

• Values-based commentary: If you must speak, focus on principles rather than personalities or drama.

• Educational context: Provide historical perspective or expert analysis that genuinely serves your audience.

What This Means for Brand Strategy in 2025

Implement a 24-hour cooling-off period before responding to any trending cultural moment

Shift KPIs away from vanity metrics toward trust signals (saves, direct messages, organic brand mentions)

• Train social teams on emotional intelligence, not just tone of voice

• Long-term positioning: Build brand equity through consistent values rather than trending topic participation

• Develop deeper audience relationships that transcend algorithmic fluctuations eg. newsletters and in person meetups so you don’t feel pressure to always perform

• Position restraint as strength, not missed opportunities

What brands are getting this right?

Tell me who you think gets things right (an individual or brand!)

The brands that thrive in our desensitised world won't be those shouting loudest or the fastest but they'll be those speaking most meaningfully. They'll understand that in an attention recession, quality engagement beats quantity and speed every time.

While competitors chase every trending topic, intentional brands can build deeper trust through strategic restraint and genuine value creation.

This requires long-term thinking in short-term cultures, patience in impatient markets, and courage to stay silent when everyone else is shouting.

I’m keen to know your thoughts as a reader and I feel like this deserves a part 2 to really get into the weeds of it all.