“The only way to win is not to play the game.” - Joshua/WOPR
I ran an experiment for December, kind of in-conjunction with switching off Twatter and over to Fedi; I unbookmarked all my “favorite” news sites and switched everything information-related to an RSS reader.
There were a few goals for this experiment:
- Filtering sites that overpost or prioritize clickbait content over informative news,
- Learning what information I retain, versus how much I think I need to retain (RSS is great for skimming news titles, which is 90% of the article anyway)
- Identifying the kinds of topics/news I’m interested in following over topics I don’t care about, and
- Identifying the news I don’t need to emotionally engage with.
The last point is the most interesting to me. I feel there’s a strong “call to arms” tone behind a lot of voices online, from media and online-persons, that I believe isn’t healthy to be exposed to as frequently as we are. The era of mass media has reprogrammed us to believe that awareness of injustice - near or far, big or small - means injustice is within “our power” to fix, and so we are assailed with injustices upon injustices, with the narrative expectation that “YOU the people can and will do something about this.”
Realistically, what can I do about Ukraine/Russia? Will devoting emotional energy to being pro-this or anti-that on social media change political discourse? Will devoting time, money, energy, etc. to fight Russia and help the Ukraine help my life here and now? Of course not. So I’ve decided to unplug from the conflict until my country says we’re actually involved.
Realistically, why should I care about a snowstorm in Buffalo stranding and killing hundreds? Is it a terrible circumstance; yes, but thousands of such circumstances happen every day without reaching my eyes. Why should I fret about it when I’m halfway across the country? So I will turn my energy to helping the hurting people around me instead.
I’m big about mindfulness and acting with purpose. By my reasoning, I/we shouldn’t shut out and reject all world news, but we all should be much more wise and selective about what we believe we need to care about. I would much rather focus on local and regional events that I participate in or can impact, than be overwhelmed by what I can never control, regardless of what The Mob believes is the right attitude to show.
#zen #mindfulness #wisdom #socialmedia #fediverse #RSS #news #massmedia #sociology #mindfulbrowsing
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