When is Trick-or-Treat?
- Thomas Breckel
- 1 day ago
- 3 min read
Why So Many People Miss What’s Happening in Their Own Community
Every community runs into the same frustrating moment.
An event is advertised.
A notice is posted.
An announcement is shared.
And yet, someone still asks, “Why didn’t anyone tell us?”
When is Trick-or-Treat?
It’s tempting to assume people simply weren’t paying attention — but the truth is far more complicated.
Today, missing local news is not a personal failure. It is the predictable outcome of how modern life works.
We Live in a Constant Noise Storm
The average person is hit with thousands of messages every day. Social media posts, emails, news alerts, advertising, work notifications, text messages, and scams all compete for the same limited mental space.
Your brain learns to protect itself by filtering aggressively. It does not evaluate every message for importance — it looks for what feels immediately relevant or emotionally charged. Anything that does not trigger urgency, fear, or excitement gets pushed aside.
That means a notice about a community meeting or a volunteer event often gets filtered the same way as an ad for shoes or a click-bait headline.
Not because it doesn’t matter — but because the brain has learned that it cannot pay attention to everything.
Algorithms Decide What People See
Most people assume that if an organization posts something important, everyone will see it.
That’s no longer true.
Social media platforms are designed to promote content that drives reactions — anger, excitement, identity, or controversy. Calm, helpful, local information doesn’t perform well in that system, so it gets shown to fewer people.
Even if someone follows Clinton County EMA, or their local school, or their township, the algorithm may still hide those posts unless the person actively searches for them.
When someone says, “I never saw it,” they may be telling the truth.
Life Has Become More Isolated
There was a time when people learned what was happening just by being out in the world — reading the paper, talking to neighbors, going to meetings, running into people at the store.
That model has quietly collapsed.
Now, many residents go from work to home and stay there. Their social world lives on a screen. Community awareness no longer happens by accident — it requires intentional effort.
Most people are not disconnected because they don’t care. They are disconnected because they are tired, busy, and overwhelmed.
We’ve Trained People to Ignore Anything That Isn’t
Urgent
Alerts and notifications are everywhere. Over time, people learn a rule: if it’s truly serious, it will break through the noise.
Everything else feels optional.
So announcements about training, preparedness, changes in services, or community events are subconsciously placed in the “I’ll deal with that later” category — even when they are important.
This makes communities less prepared, even though more information is available than ever before.
Information No Longer Travels by Curiosity — It Travels
by Emotion
The modern world runs on emotion-driven content. Outrage spreads. Drama spreads. Fear spreads.
Quiet, practical, useful information does not.
That is why it is easier to hear about a celebrity scandal than a road closure, or a viral rumor than a safety workshop.
Local voices are trying to speak in a system that was never designed to amplify them.
What This Means for Community Resilience
Being part of a community used to be automatic. Now it is something we have to choose.
When people miss announcements or events, it doesn’t mean they don’t value their town. It means the signal is weak and the noise is loud.
Emergency management, public safety, schools, churches, and volunteer groups all depend on people being aware — not just during disasters, but before them.
Resilient communities are built when people:
know what’s happening
know where to go
and know how to get involved
That starts with awareness, even in a world that constantly tries to take it away.
A Quiet Invitation
If you ever catch yourself saying, “I didn’t know that was going on,” you’re not alone. It’s happening everywhere.
But staying connected — even just a little — makes a difference.
That’s how communities stay strong — not because everyone is perfect, but because enough people choose to stay plugged in.