by Ewan Waddell
The Longer You Bleed (2025): When screens numb the soul
Bombed-out cities, desperate families, pixelated bodies pulled from rubble; all compressed into silent, looping videos on our social media or news feeds. These horrific glimpses are casually embedded right there, between fleeting memes and influencer skincare routines. We watch. We might feel a brief, sharp flinch. And then, we move on.
This unsettling modern reality is precisely what we sought to explore in our new documentary, The Longer You Bleed, a film that delves into how war itself becomes spectacle in the age of endless scrolling. Following displaced Ukrainians in Berlin as they navigate their homeland’s war through screens, we aimed to offer a sobering look at the emotional costs of living in a world oversaturated with information.
The film explores the question: Is our current media culture actually killing our empathy? Or just paralysing it.
This is a complex, multifaceted topic, and though we hope the film can contribute to supporting this vital, albeit emerging, conversation, there’s still so much more to delve into.
The Silent Epidemic: Compassion Fatigue
Today, we face an unsettling paradox: we’re more exposed to human suffering than ever, yet we feel increasingly unable to truly grasp or feel it. This phenomenon is called compassion fatigue. Though it first described the emotional exhaustion of professionals like therapists and aid workers, it now feels universally applicable. Our digital feeds are so saturated with tragedy that we often admit that the more that we see, the less that we actually process. This overwhelming volume of suffering simply numbs our senses, reducing the genuine pain of others to mere background noise.
As Susan Sontag observed in Regarding the Pain of Others: “Compassion is an unstable emotion. It needs to be translated into action, or it withers. The question is what to do with the feelings that have been aroused, the knowledge that has been communicated. If one feels that there is nothing ‘we’ can do… then one starts to get bored, cynical, apathetic.”
This is the essence of what happens when we’re bombarded with images of pain without a clear path to act. The emotional weight becomes too much, leading to a dangerous apathy that allows suffering to become commonplace.
A haunting footnote to this point is that Susan Sontag wrote this in 2003, before social media, smartphones, and their collaborative reimagination of our overwhelming media landscape.
Our minds simply weren’t built for the relentless, omnipresent exposure to global anguish that we now face. Rather, our emotional frameworks evolved to process distress in smaller, more personal settings. Historically, tragedies were experienced locally or, more recently, conveyed through slower news cycles, allowing for crucial distance and processing time.
Social media, however, has obliterated this. It acts as an unfiltered pipeline, delivering the raw pain of the entire globe non-stop. This algorithmic avalanche of crises overwhelms us.
One psychological consequence is emotional static: too much to feel, so we just stop feeling. It’s a coping mechanism, but one with worrying implications for how we connect and respond to suffering. For the sensitive or politically engaged, this can lead to chronic stress, but for the masses, I worry this may lead to a collective withdrawal from action, if this phenomenon intensifies.
The Unseen Hands Shaping Our Compassion
The very design of our social feeds actively pushes us toward empathetic decline. Their main goal isn’t understanding or connection, it’s engagement. Every algorithm is fine-tuned to keep our eyes glued, encouraging clicks, likes, and shares. In this system, a war crime and a trending dance get the same algorithmic boost. A bombing can appear next to a brunch photo, creating a jarring, desensitising clash.
This trivialises profound suffering, turning a call to action into just another piece of consumable content; a fleeting spectacle in an endless scroll. We see countless pleas for attention, but few receive the sustained focus needed for genuine empathy and real change.
But what other choice do we have? These algorithms hold a near monopoly over our attention, so if we want to shine a light on a tragedy or spread awareness about a crisis, we often find ourselves compelled to play by their rules.
The absurdity of this predicament struck me most forcefully when we were making our film, The Longer You Bleed, which explores this very topic from the Ukrainian perspective. One particular instance, which regrettably didn’t make it into the final cut, was the ‘OnlyFans Flash Mob’.
This was a social media trend among the Ukrainian diaspora, predominantly women, who would post sexually provocative selfies on their Instagram stories with a link titled ‘OnlyFans’. However, clicking the link wouldn’t take you to an OnlyFans profile; deceptively, it would redirect you to a donation page for the Ukrainian Armed Forces or humanitarian aid.
This was undeniably clever. Since the uploader couldn’t see who clicked the link, many of their followers, shocked that this ‘normal’ girl they knew had seemingly ventured into OnlyFans, would click out of curiosity, salacious or otherwise.
That click, in turn, generated engagement data that the algorithm would interpret as: ‘this is content people should see more of.’ Even if people didn’t click, they’d likely linger on the story longer, given its unusual and provocative nature, which also provided valuable algorithm boosting data.
It was a playful, sneaky way to divert traffic to humanitarian or military donation pages. Yet, on paper at least, it’s also deeply sad and troubling.
If we consider our current media landscape, at least in part, as a reflection of our societal sentiments, then what does it truly say about us? What circumstances have we, consciously or otherwise, allowed to develop where female refugees might feel compelled to resort to using their bodies and exploiting people’s intrusive intrigue as a desperate means to bring attention to a genocide unfolding in their country?
Now, I know that characterisation might paint a darker portrait of this initiative, than is entirely accurate, as it seemed from our vantage point that the women we interviewed who participated somewhat enjoyed the playfully raunchy qualities of the idea. Regardless, the question persists: what does this tell us about ourselves? And how will the cold ink of history ultimately characterise our media culture of today, if such an event felt not just viable, but necessary?
These unsettling digital dynamics force us to confront uncomfortable truths about how we consume suffering, and how that shapes, or dulls, our emotional landscape.
The Consequences of Numbness
The consequences of this pervasive emotional numbness are far-reaching and deeply troubling, touching the very core of our society. They stretch well beyond our individual mental health (though the personal burden of constant exposure to trauma is significant).
We’re seeing increased rates of anxiety, stress, and a general sense of being overwhelmed, symptoms of a system constantly on high alert. Crucially, this blunting of feeling severely impacts our collective political and humanitarian response.
This is the danger: a society that sees everything but feels nothing, and consequently, does nothing. But we’re not there yet.
I don’t believe our society is doing nothing. In fact, perhaps on a contradictory note, I observe the opposite, with credit to our media culture.
The generally democratised nature of our media landscape and social media actually allows for action, and this has been demonstrated powerfully by well-organised online political movements. These movements have put serious pressure on governments to act, highlighting issues and mobilising support in ways previously unimaginable.
Of course, this isn’t always a smooth process; there are huge issues of polarisation, echo chambers, and radicalisation due to the algorithms in these online spaces. But there’s an undeniable power in the democratised nature of these platforms, and a real benefit in terms of political action.
However, the sentiment I’m hinting at here isn’t about our current state of complete inaction, but rather the trajectory we’re on. If this phenomenon of collective numbness and compassion fatigue continues to intensify, where will it ultimately lead us?
If our capacity for genuine feeling continues to erode, will the very tools that enable collective action eventually lose their power?
The question isn’t whether we can act now, but whether we will be able to act with genuine empathy and conviction in a future shaped by overwhelming digital saturation.
Finding Our Way Back
However, I don’t believe this numbness is the end. I see it as a critical signal: our emotional systems are overloaded, not broken.
While individual or collective withdrawal from media might seem like a solution, I think this is both unrealistic and politically unhealthy. The answer, I believe, lies not in less information, but in new ways to process it.
This will demand rethinking media literacy to include emotional literacy; understanding how content affects us and triggers compassion fatigue. We must actively develop new understandings around our relationships with new media and algorithms. I don’t personally know what that might look like, but I think these conversations are essential for maintaining emotional resilience and collective empathy long-term.
Moreover, platform responsibility is crucial. Digital infrastructures shaping our attention carry a profound moral dimension. Tech companies, who engineer what we click, must be accountable for how they present human suffering. The current model prioritises quick consumption over thoughtful engagement, undermining empathy.
Ultimately, we need to reclaim spaces for genuine feeling. We must sit with pain long enough for it to transform into understanding and actionable care, not despair. This isn’t about looking away, but finding a sustainable way to engage with the world’s pain without going numb. Because if we lose the ability to feel, we inevitably lose the capacity to act. And if we stop acting, what is the purpose of all this witnessing?
