> If they were sick of it, they wouldn’t lap it up

The evidence does not support that.

People will often ignore their own plights (from which they are tired and feel trapped or impotent) to engage in remote problems with a feeling of authority and power. Voting for a federal office is the ultimate diversion. Rather than argue and campaign for local changes where they understand exactly what impact they can make (or not make), they invest in a far away problem for which they feel like there is a different performance profile.

People are sick of some crisis mongering, they just like a change of pace.

Yeah, it reminds me of the anecdotal phenomenon I’ve observed, that the kind of people to say “god, i just haaate getting involved in drama in general” are the ones to be most likely to stir up that drama in the first place.

Hmm, I think there's a difference between heavily fictionalized external personal drama and the diffuse, anxiety-provoking miasma of social media and mainstream news headlines feeds.

Even if there isn't a huge difference, I feel like the relationship is more like that of an alcoholic or other addict. Do addicts really "like" their drug? Surely most of them know at some level that it's really unhealthy, and there's diminishing pleasurable returns even in the short term, but they still crave it as a release from their short term anxieties and problems.