No, there was not an Ebola outbreak at the Burning Man festival this year.

The rumour circulated on social media after the festival, which is held on a barren desert playa in western Nevada, was unexpectedly drenched by rain this year.

This turned the dust of the playa into a thick coat of mud, and stranded thousands of revellers, who were told that they could not drive out. Some walked for miles through the muck, while others 鈥渟heltered in place鈥� and waited for the return of the trucks that service the portable toilets.

But the unexpected hiccup in Burning Man鈥檚 plans produced a lot more media attention than the annual event usually receives.

Everyone loves a catastrophe.

Sometimes it鈥檚 horrifying. It鈥檚 hard to look away from news about major natural disasters, whether it鈥檚 the forest fires that have ravaged Canada this year, destroying homes in multiple communities and threatening whole cities, or the hurricanes that have hit unexpected locations, like southern California.

Sometimes it鈥檚 more a case of schadenfreude, as with Burning Man, or the ill-fated Fyre Festival. Watching a bunch of well-heeled people having their party spoiled, or being outright scammed, can be a source of grim amusement.

The media is responsible both for providing a lot of this material, and then for giving a platform to people who like to scold those who read and watch it.

Should we really be consumed with true crime podcasts, with the voyeuristic details of criminal trials, with the predictable CNN coverage of a coastal house toppling into the ocean as another storm strikes?

That鈥檚 a hard question to answer.

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Catastrophes are spectacles 鈥� they鈥檙e impressive, and like a car crash by the side of the road, it鈥檚 hard to turn away.

But they are also serious news, with long-term implications.

Without footage of charred houses and leaping flames, would there be as many donations to fire relief efforts? Can coverage of a disaster spark political will to rebuild, and to work to prevent similar future destruction?

The long-term implications, like the impact of climate change, rising home insurance costs, and the consequences of allowing construction in fire interface zones and on floodplains, may not get as much immediate attention 鈥� but it helps that people reading about those issues remember the reasons they鈥檙e important.

In general, I鈥檓 trying to see these catastrophic spectacles less as a disaster, and more as lessons. It鈥檚 hard. We鈥檙e all humans, and humans love to gawk. We鈥檙e hardwired to worry about disasters, and that makes it easy to draw our attention with them.

As long as we focus on the causes and the aftermath, a little disaster goes a long way.