Pessimism porn is a neologism used to describe the alleged eschatological and survivalist thrill some people derive from pessimistic behavior, specifically predicting, reading and fantasizing about societal collapse through means such as the destruction of the world's economic system.
[5] Thomas P.M. Barnett, chief analyst at Wikistrat, has criticized apocalyptic predictions for the global economy as problematically short-sighted because "human history is progress, so if you're constantly having to screen out the good to spot the bad, your vision will be unduly narrow....you must consistently discount advances as 'illusions' and 'buying time' and so on, and after a while, you're just this broken clock who's dead-on twice a day.
"[2] Purveyors of pessimism porn tend to cite as examples of an approaching economic Armageddon the scenario of the world, particularly the Chinese, giving up on the dollar as a reserve currency; movements such as Occupy Wall Street; and the collapse of the European Union and the Euro.
[1] Lindgren cited the blog Calculated Risk as a "reliable turn-on" for its author's knack for writing about the dangers of plummeting rates for various goods, such as commercial paper.
Celente has predicted that in 2012 the United States will see food riots, shantytowns in Central Park and "economic martial law", and that the only protections from the chaos to come are "the three g's—gold, guns and a get-away plan.