Destroying Others & Bias

Why is it that some people are so obsessed with trying to bring down others? The media does it to celebrities all the time. This man says this, this woman says that, and you have a big story created, complete with bias and misleading statements. Politicians do the same thing. What is it about people that they are so obsessed with trying to one up someone else that they will try to destroy their reputation, and even ruin their lives in some cases?

I like to use myself as a prime example here. For anyone who doesn't know, I leave behind a sort of long and controversial history on the internet. If you ask anyone who dislikes me about it, you're bound to dislike me too. Being a little too out-spoken at a young age and having a big audience can be a deadly weapon, and the result is always the same -- people who don't know how to let go of the past and realize that people make mistakes. Sometimes things are much worse than they appear, but not always. Sometimes things aren't nearly as bad as one might believe. Sometimes the stories are just dead wrong.

I personally don't care who holds grudges against me or anyone else, but trying to destroy someone else is where people go fundamentally wrong and is where I see fault in quite a lot of people on the internet and media both. I think it's a negative influence on both children and adults. How many things do we believe to be true that really aren't, and vise-versa, all because of dishonesty and distortions that don't bring out the true character that fills the story? If we were all a little more open-minded about these stories, we'd begin to see how obvious some of the bias is that we are faced with daily. It's something I think about a lot, and I think everyone else should too.