Zoë Schlanger: “As climate change progresses and extreme events mount, [emergency push] alerts will keep coming. Eventually, certain climate-related extreme weather events may become so repetitive that their danger—though no less threatening—might cease to feel exceptional. Some call this human quirk ‘shifting baseline syndrome.’ Emergency managers call it ‘alert fatigue.’ It may be one of the biggest problems facing their field as climate disasters mount.
“Some emergency push alerts come from private apps, but my phone, and probably yours too, is attached to the U.S. Wireless Emergency Alert system. FEMA administers the channel, but authorized federal, state, tribal, and local emergency managers can all use it to disseminate a message on virtually everyone’s phones in a specific area. (You probably received the blaring test of the system on October 4, 2023.) The system is remarkable, and can be lifesaving. But its usefulness is vulnerable to both bureaucratic misuse and the human capacity to normalize almost anything.”
Jesus Christ I get alert after alert from Apple Weather. ***I heard you the first time.***
We’re all going to die, and it’s going to be annoying.
We went through a flood event two years ago, with push notifications being sent to our phones every six hours for about two weeks. Now, every time I get a push notification from that app, I feel sick. The experience of repeated, ongoing push notifications wasn’t normalised, it was traumatising.
5 comments
Zoë Schlanger: “As climate change progresses and extreme events mount, [emergency push] alerts will keep coming. Eventually, certain climate-related extreme weather events may become so repetitive that their danger—though no less threatening—might cease to feel exceptional. Some call this human quirk ‘shifting baseline syndrome.’ Emergency managers call it ‘alert fatigue.’ It may be one of the biggest problems facing their field as climate disasters mount.
“Some emergency push alerts come from private apps, but my phone, and probably yours too, is attached to the U.S. Wireless Emergency Alert system. FEMA administers the channel, but authorized federal, state, tribal, and local emergency managers can all use it to disseminate a message on virtually everyone’s phones in a specific area. (You probably received the blaring test of the system on October 4, 2023.) The system is remarkable, and can be lifesaving. But its usefulness is vulnerable to both bureaucratic misuse and the human capacity to normalize almost anything.”
Read more here: [~https://theatln.tc/0lGFyK1t~](https://theatln.tc/0lGFyK1t)
🌊
Jesus Christ I get alert after alert from Apple Weather. ***I heard you the first time.***
We’re all going to die, and it’s going to be annoying.
We went through a flood event two years ago, with push notifications being sent to our phones every six hours for about two weeks. Now, every time I get a push notification from that app, I feel sick. The experience of repeated, ongoing push notifications wasn’t normalised, it was traumatising.