Good times in the stock markets

In the decades since I started paying attention to the equity markets, I've lived through five, maybe six, sizable bear markets. In each of those, there was this 'sky is falling' atmosphere created by investors. In the 90s, the panic used to be limited to a small community of traders, but after the rise of the internet and now social media, the sky has started falling harder and faster and heavier. Right now, even though the current decline is nothing compared to the ones in 2000 or 2008-09, there's just so much constant panic-mongering that it's seriously affecting investors' perception of how bad things are. And yet, any veteran investor knows what a bear market actually means. Without exception, every bear market or