The “suffering as porn” genre only works when the viewer does not care about the people who suffer. In 2002, the artist Damien Hirst compared the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks to a masterpiece. “It was kind of an artwork in its own right,” he said. “It was wicked, but it was devised in this way for this kind of impact. It was devised visually.”

The vast majority of Americans were appalled at Hirst’s depersonalization of violence and its subsequent grief. His priority was not how pain felt, but what it looked like: a take cruel in its superficiality.

That mechanical cruelty—of seeing without looking, of passion devoid of compassion—lives on in clickbait disaster porn.

In December, Laura Dimon, daughter of JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon and an alleged journalist, wrote an article about Flint, Michigan, using the same word now used to describe Ukraine: “apocalyptic.” “This is America’s Most Apocalyptic, Violent City — And You’ve Probably Never Heard Of It,” the article proclaimed of the city once a subject of a Michael Moore documentary.

Dimon did not bother to visit Flint, which became abundantly clear when she illustrated the article with a picture of Ramla, Israel. Another photo of “Flint” turned out to be Detroit. In the world of disaster porn, all struggling places are interchangeable, because the people who live in them are viewed as equally disposable. Today we are watching Ukraine, but we might have been watching Thailand, or Venezuela or Egypt. The place itself doesn’t really matter, as long as there is fire and blood.

Does it do any good to turn away from Ukraine’s carnage? Not really. Ukrainians do not benefit when Westerners reject a poorly conceived Buzzfeed listicle. But sloppiness and viciousness are a bad combination. Violence never exists in a vacuum, it is only perceived that way—and when you are on the losing end of the perception, you are at risk, as anyone who lives in a place written off as “one of those places” can tell you.

Look at the images of Ukraine, but do not consume them without context. (Thorough reporting and analysis abound.) When you see a headline about somewhere “apocalyptic,” remember that an “apocalypse” does not feel cinematic to the person experiencing it. It feels, instead, like the end of the world.

Correction: An earlier version of this article incorrectly dated the Sept. 11th attacks to Sept. 11, 2011.