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Our Mission

The mission at The Banality Report is best summed up in our tag line: Our stories never lead and rarely bleed.

But what does that really mean?

Our homepage summarizes our mission with a little more detail:

Most news bums us out and lacks perspective. The Banality Report covers the truth of human progress in a different way. We write the news that isn’t news but should be. There is so much banality in our world and its wonderful.

Um… ok, that’s… cryptic. Is this some kind of parody news site then?

The Banality Report is not a parody news site. Everything we write here is true unless clearly stated otherwise. We love satire and parody, and we think you’ll see some of that style reflected here; however, the news we print is real. It’s just not the kind of thing you’ll ever see on the front pages of the world’s “real” newspapers, and we’ll never be the lead on the 24/7 cable news shows. Our news is real, but its also not really… news.

We want to make the non-news, newsier, the mundane readable, and do so in short, easy to digest bursts with only the key information. We have short attention spans, so it’s ok to admit you do too. Our stories will rarely, if ever, exceed 500 words, the equivalent of one printed page (back when printing was a thing), and many will be no more than three paragraphs long, (obviously that does not apply to our mission page). We will always provide you with our sources in case you want to get a deeper dive into whatever topic the article covers. Some articles will also have some asterisks (*) sprinkled about, which you can hover over and learn some extra facts (for nerds).

Come on, Banana Prima! You’re still not telling us what this site is all about!

Banana Prima Here, Reporting for Duty!

Ok, you asked for it then. I tried to be succinct, but you’ve poked my inner storyteller, which has a tendency to ramble on and on and on and on… Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

I created this site because I’m tired of the 24/7 news cycle controlling our emotions and beliefs about the world (even the universe, or multi-verse), and thereby controlling how we interact and relate with each other, our fellow human beings. As I see it, the problem has been worse since the advent of social media. Humans are easily persuaded by emotional arguments, and anecdotal evidence (of course, the Banana Prima is no different so simmer down; we try to disclose our biases here). The media’s need to make money has manifested itself in its creating content designed to capture our eyeballs (no they’re not stealing our actual eyeballs, although I admit, Minority Report did freak me out a little bit in this genre), and get us to click on their content by manipulating our emotions. I am by no means against the desire to make money. We are pro-Capitalism here at The Banality Report, but incentives matter, and right now, this is the world we live in.

In fairness, the news has always been like this. If it bleeds it leads wasn’t created after the advent of the internet. Now more than ever, partly exacerbated because of technology, and people we know and trust sharing information at lightning speed, when we see the latest tragedy, we too often believe Horrific Event X is a realistic representation of the state of the world, and that state is dark. We suppress our fundamental human capacity for logic and reason, and let emotions make us forget how far we as a species have come, if we even learned in the first place. We have made tremendous progress in climbing out of the short tragic lives humans have suffered through, the base-state of nature of most of our ancestors, for most of our existence. While too many people on earth do still live in tragic conditions with too much suffering and too little happiness, that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t celebrate the gains we’ve made towards eliminating most suffering, not just for humans, but for other animal species, and yes, even Mother Earth.

How can we know the best path for more improvement if we can’t acknowledge the reality of what we have already accomplished? While stories we write won’t always be positive (check out our Banana Ripeness Color Rating Scale page for more about this), but most will be on the sunnier side of reality (or yellow bananas), and likely sprinkled with a healthy dose of tongue-in-cheek, quirky, and ironic humor.

The Banality Report aims to put Human progress into perspective by telling the stories that no sane newspaper, television news program, or podcast would bother telling because it doesn’t stir our emotions and attract the clicks. I wish the amazing story of human progress was on the daily front page news, but I know it never will be. The Banality Report is my attempt to stop lamenting, and be the change I want to see in my little corner of the internet.

I hope you follow me along for the journey!

Do you have any influences or sources of inspiration for this site?

The Banality Report has been germinating in the Head Banana’s mind for many years, and has been inspired and influenced by many sources, especially by sources that have told the truth about Human progress and supported their analysis with data.

The Banality Report does not live in a vacuum. We will use research and analysis by scientists, researchers, writers, academics, subject matter experts, podcasters, bloggers, professionals of all kinds in all industries, and yes, even journalists in the lead and bleed world, as appropriate. We will do our best to give credit where its due in individual articles along the way. If you ever think we are not doing so well enough, please call us out on it. Even Banana Primas are not perfect creatures.

There have been some particularly poignant sources of inspiration for us. We will likely reference these sources frequently. Our articles will also include other specific references used within and listed at the bottom of each article. The list below shows some of the key influences that brought The Banality Report into existence, but it is not exhaustive, and may be updated as we gain new inspiration along the way.