EXCLUSIVE: Doomscrolling vs. living—What an author with terminal cancer wants you to know

An author living with a slow and terminal cancer wrote a thread on Bluesky that moved thousands who are trying to cope with these times. Mishell Baker, author of the Arcadia Project trilogy and writer of the “Make Things Better” charity newsletter, drew from her experience coming to terms with a deadly and incurable illness to reach out to those she saw struggling with uncertainty and dread.

The Daily Dot reached out to Baker to learn more about the thought process leading to her viral thread, how she achieved acceptance around her cancer diagnosis, and the reaction to her comforting words.

How a terminal cancer diagnosis changed author Mishell Baker’s perspective on fear

On Jan. 20, 2025—President Donald Trump’s second inauguration day—Baker recognized an opportunity to reach out to her followers on Bluesky, where thousands of users migrated after leaving X, formerly known as Twitter. As someone living with a slow form of cancer, she identified parallels between her situation and the fear she witnessed on the platform that day.

“Being a person with deadly, incurable cancer who is nonetheless still alive for an indefinite timeframe gives me an interesting metaphor that helps me deal with things like large-scale corruption in government or commerce,” she began.

Baker has mucinous adenocarcinoma, a rare cancer of the tissue that covers every part of the body’s internal and external surfaces. She says it started quietly and metastasized before symptoms arose, and doctors initially thought she only had a few months to live. When they discovered that the cancer was a slow-acting variety, Baker’s terror turned to joy.

“Suddenly all I could think of was the things I’d have the chance to see, to do, that I’d thought weren’t possible. In that moment I think I became emotionally bulletproof. I’ve never been the same.”

Thinking about the cancer is actively harmful

“So, there are times when I need to pay attention to the cancer, like, when I have to go to doctor’s appointments, take a medication on time, or make choices regarding self-care to increase my quality of life,” she goes on. “But when I am not doing those things, thinking about the cancer is actively harmful.”

“There are moments when I feel okay, and my daughter wants to play a video game with me. Or I have the chance to see a cool movie, or the urge to write a story. I cannot do these things if I am paralyzed with horror and dismay thinking in detail about what’s happening in my body.”

Are we wasting our lives on doomscrolling?

Those of us who have spent time doomscrolling or have internalized the message we must always be witnessing the horrors might notice similarities between what Baker describes and what we’ve been doing to ourselves. Discussions have proliferated on Bluesky and beyond about what this behavior is doing to our mental health, and by extension, our ability to act.

Is it morally acceptable to seek joy while an existential threat looms and others suffer? Baker argues that regardless, it’s essential.

“People might see me laughing my ass off at Futurama with my daughter or niggling over lore details of a video game and think, ‘How can she just IGNORE that she is dying of cancer? She’s in denial! Sad!’” she writes. “Opposite of sad. Not in denial. In full acceptance of the ENTIRETY of my situation.”

Is it ok to seek joy while the world burns?

“It genuinely does not matter, the SIZE of the horror that looms over one, even if it threatens one’s very life,” the author says. “When it is time to deal with that horror—to ameliorate, evade, conquer, whatever is available to you—you will know. By all means, focus on the task.”

“But every minute you focus on that horror when you are not actively doing something to evade or improve or ameliorate the situation (receiving chemo, taking Zofran, listening to the doctor, etc.), you are WASTING WHAT’S LEFT OF YOUR WILD PRECIOUS LIFE.”

The dangers of doomscrolling

With unprecedented access to information, social media users face constant temptations to keep scrolling, especially when they feel unsafe. Information feels like power—like it can give us some level of control over what might happen.

At the same time, staying informed or “bearing witness” feels like a moral imperative for many, as though “looking away” is admitting defeat or abandoning those in need. However, mental health experts have warned for years that doomscrolling often causes depression, anxiety, and other detrimental effects that impair one’s ability to take action.

Dr. Aditi Nerurkar of the Division of Global Health and Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School warned in 2024 that our brains did not develop to handle this sort of long-term stress. Meanwhile, the overstimulation from scrolling weakens our ability to act in the real world—something she calls “popcorn brain.”

“It’s the real, biological phenomenon of feeling your brain is popping because you’re being overstimulated online,” she explained for Harvard Health. “Then it’s hard to engage with the real world, which moves at a much slower pace.”

Baker confessed this phenomenon has made her more lonely because people feel compelled to doomscroll rather than socialize.

“All the things we used to enjoy feel trivial to them, because everyone online is pointing to the latest tragedy and saying, ‘Don’t you dare look away! Witness this!’ And we take that to mean, every moment you’re awake, you should have your eyes glued to a train wreck you can’t stop.”

The internet’s rare moment of agreement

Looking through the comments on Baker’s thread, it’s miraculously difficult to find detractors. Baker told the Daily Dot via email she only got one negative response and the positive responses vastly overwhelmed any critical sting.

“People kept saying things about how wonderful my thread was, and I wanted to laugh and turn the mirror around and say, don’t you see that the real miracle here is your response?” she wrote. “There were all these people out here who were so ready to set aside their own suffering for a moment to reach out to me, to thank me.”

“They could have just kept doomscrolling, but they didn’t. They stopped for a moment to try to see the world through my eyes, and to care deeply about someone they’d never met.”

A lot of this care may have come from gratitude among people weighed down for so long by a self-imposed obligation to stare at the train wreck.

“Thank you for this dose of perspective. It’s helpful on so many levels. Wishing you more good days full of joy,” wrote commenter @corvidmelodies.bsky.social‬.

“Thank you for this thread,” said @mirrorkirby.bsky.social‬. “Your words made the world around me feel a little less scary and urgent. I really admire your perspective on life.”

Why Baker’s viral thread struck a nerve

Baker’s philosophy helped inspire her to make this thread, even if she had no idea it would blow up like it did. Bolstered by years of therapy that taught her how to remain level-headed under moments of great stress, she recognized an opportunity and took it.

“I had about five hundred followers on Bluesky that night, and to me, that particular thread was nothing unusual, just another of my occasional rambling monologues to a few friends,” she told the Daily Dot. “But something about the timing of the thread, or who happened to be looking at it that night—it just kind of took off.”

We all know what timing she’s talking about, but it’s also not surprising that her words resonated so hard with so many. Even the idea of treating oneself has been attacked by some on the left, who made a meme out of the term “Treatler“—a combination of “treat” and “Hitler”—to deride those who seek moments of joy.

Perhaps seeking joy and living one’s life under the horrors isn’t selfish, however. Maybe it’s necessary, as opportunities to help may not always be in the reach of the average person, but if we’re not mired in depression, we’re more likely to see the opportunity when it arrives and be in a better place to fight.

Building a ‘mental paradise’ — before it’s too late

Baker concludes her thread by stressing that seeking joy and sharing it with others is important for its own sake. We must, after all, find reasons to keep fighting for a world we love, full of people we love, and ruminating on everything that makes that world worse drains us of our will to protect it as opportunities pass us by.

“You have opportunity after opportunity to create something lovely for yourself or others,” Baker’s reminds us. “Every moment you choose to sit and think about horrors beyond your control, every time you make the choice to look for more and more details about just HOW bad… you are turning away from those opportunities.”

“There is no calamity so huge that there is not beauty and humor and joy to be had in the moments between actively working on solving or evading it,” she says. “Learning to take those moments, embrace the hell out of them, is what will make it all worth it, at whatever point you reach the end.”

Asked what else she might like readers to understand about surviving under what feels like impending doom, Baker urges you to remember that “you are still a person.”

“You can’t always stop other people from being cruel, from taking away your job, your rights, or your possessions, but it’s your choice whether you let them take away your mind. Each of us has a place inside of us that no one can reach without our permission, a little mental paradise that we can build and maintain for ourselves, and it’s worth protecting.”

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