Taking Advantage of a Bad Situation

Is writing about a bad situation taking advantage of it?

A little over a month ago, there was a shooting involving two news reporters and an interviewee. I had strong feelings about the incident including how the media handled it and how internet reporters and bloggers seemed to quickly type up responses and summaries of the event.

I considered making a video of my thoughts or typing a blog post, but I didn't. The reason is that it felt like taking advantage. While my intention was to share my thoughts and how we should react to the situation,  I couldn't help but think, there are people typing articles about this to gain hits to their site. They just want views.  I'm not implicating the internet at large, but that thought stopped me from posting my thoughts. I don't want to take advantage or game the system.

My reserve for posting about the incident is also inherent to how I believe we should react. A murderer, misguided, wanted to become famous so he created a video of a heinous event he orchestrated.

I didn't watch his video, because that's exactly what he wanted and it's a very emotional moment. It's a private incident I should never see. No one should ever see it.

Mentally misguided individuals commit crimes in an effort to get attention because they know people will watch. We need to stop watching. The media needs to stop sharing things like that. If we didn't talk about the individuals, imitators would have less reason to copy. Abstain from watching.

While I want to excel at anything I do, I don't want to excel by gaming the system or doing something I don't believe in. I see how well 'prank' videos do online and thought about creating prank videos, but I instantly realized, I don't like the idea and I don't want to do it. Getting views for the sake of it holds no interest for me.

We're faced with situations where we succumb to peer pressure and visit a restaurant we don't like or attend an event we find boring. This isn't always a bad thing, until it completely overcomes your interests. If you don't want to go to a birthday party, don't. Be tactful in your response, and in some cases the best decision might be to go.
Don't do things just for the attention or the hits it might generate. That is selling yourself short.