doom loop

What is a doom loop? You might be familiar with the term in another context: urban doom loops. That has made headlines because experts are concerned some of America’s largest cities risk falling into an economic doom loop, which is a negative spiral that results from increasing remote work that leads to urban businesses to close and lose tax revenue. It’s what we saw in San Francisco.  But for the most part, a doom loop is described as a scenario in which one negative thought leads to the next, and the next, in a continuous loop. One negative event triggers another, which can compound the first or trigger the next.  Andrew Shatte, chief knowledge officer, and co-founder of stress management app meQuilibrium, describes it as “vicious cycles“ that focus on the negative rather than the positive. “People are prone to negative thinking and doom loops as part of their survival strategy,” said Shatte, “Most of us have had times when we woke up at 3 a.m., ruminating over all the terrible things that could come our way. Very few of us have thoughts of unicorns and rainbows at that time of night.”

WTF is a doom loop and why is it harmful in the workplace? Cloey Callahan 2023

Suddenly, so-called superstar cities—such as New York, Boston, and Los Angeles, which boomed throughout the 2010s—were facing what experts called an “urban doom loop.” The more people moved away, the worse things would get; the worse things got, the more people would move away; and so on, in an endless spiral that would do to superstar cities what the decline of the auto industry did to Detroit.

Whatever Happened to the Urban Doom Loop? Rogé Karma 2024