Pictures of the sanitized world we live in

One of the main challenges facing a blogger is finding the right images to illustrate their post. Most try to have original photos, but there’s a limit to that. There’s only so many things a regular person can take pictures of. What do you do then? Try one of the sites that offer images. And you hit a brick wall.
I’ve spent most of the afternoon writing something on my alt-account and I needed a picture of Hell. I have many original images of nature and streets and birds, but no photos of Hell (fortunately, I guess).
Well, let’s try Pixabay, to stay legit. They have more than 1.6 million images, plenty to choose from. The site promptly informs its users of the most popular categories - love, music, flowers and I don’t think it has anything to do with Valentine’s day.
Have you ever noticed how hard it is to find grim images, pain and suffering and Hell? I suspect they operate under a demand and supply policy so why would they stock up on grim images? Who’d ever need them?
This is Hell, according to Pixabay:

An ordinary chick in a cheap costume!

Who’s going to write about Hell as such? Life and death and eternal damnation... Surely you must be thinking about Halloween. Maybe a camp-fire would do nicely for your post…

Let’s not even speak about the Devil himself. I was served with people making the horns sign at a concert. Apparently, mainstream media still associates heavy-metal with satanism!

I could easily take pictures of that at the concerts I go to and I can assure you I’ve never seen any real demons at any of those venues!
Maybe I’m weird and there’s no demand for images of the biblical Hell…

What about the many times I’ve looked for pictures of schools and kids? The people that run these image sites firmly believe you’ll be needing pictures of happy children mesmerized by their teachers words. Who in their right mind would search for sad and depressed children? Kids are happy to be in school, anybody knows that? Are you crazy or what?

This kid can't wait to get to school!

Abused children? Only a couple of pictures, I'm sure you've seen a thousand times already...

Try looking for health related pictures… If you’re writing about Big Pharma you’re on your own. Most of the pictures you can choose from are doctors with friendly faces, everybody’s smiling, even the patients, for they will soon be cured…
Those on Shutterstock, where you need to pay, are even worse...

Not your ordinary doctor, I think...

Mainstream media and the millions of positive sites, full of feel-good bloody mainstream ideas have no need for grim pictures. Grim pictures turn people away and send the wrong message, don’t they? We live in a wonderful worlds where nothing really bad ever happens and all you need is nice images with cute dogs and many many hearts!

Thanks for reading

Images: 1,2, 3, 4, 5, 6.