It’s been more than a year since I wrote You Know, We Can Just Stop Consuming the News, and more than a year since I just, you know, stopped consuming the news. At first I didn’t realize it would need to be a social media purge as well, but after seeing too much news via Instagram early on (my last bastion of a social network), I ended up deleting it too.
I feel that that abstaining from the 24 hour news cycle is a great privilege (a blessed truth that it broadly does not impact me). But I don’t get the sense I’m taking advantage of others to claw out my calm-did anyone else have a wayward member of their circle who refused to buy a cell phone but leaned on everyone else for directions and beyond? I seem to hear of emerging events that most impact me via others – my husband or coworkers, in passing. It’s more that people bubble up emerging news that impacts them because they want to process it, and the stuff that bubbles up I’m happy to discuss. At that point it’s not a feed, it’s a personal connection.
For the longer cycle world-goings-on, I still welcome essays, magazine articles, books, podcasts and more. Recommendations of longer form, thoughtful, world-analyses appreciated! I’d like another name for this content and I think I like brew as it has the right connotation of the time and effort taken to prepare a thoughtful take for consumption. I got close to having a lot of brews on tap: later in the year, I discovered Substack had a feed which is pretty decent for longer form content exploring the zeitgeist without having a circadian rhythm. But I quickly tired of it: having abstained from feed-driven-content for so long, the algorithmic feed had less signal to noise than it was worth. So I kept a few email subscriptions, and deleted the app-with-feed itself.
For all the year of abstention, I don’t feel particularly out of date. There’s one less thing on my todo list each day (multiple more if you include the lack of social media), freeing up time and mental cycles. The algorithm-to-eyeballs pathway is much more circuitous for me, giving me enough immunity to shakily assert I think for myself.
As an outsider to this cycle now I sometimes feel like an anthropologist. Hearing a variety of people suddenly cotton on to the same turn of phrase or cultural worry makes me often ask outright – where did you get this? From the news? Observing disparate people articulate the same phrase or concept, then seem to forget it as it as the cycle passes, gives me the sense that their thoughts are not their own, but just memes passing between one ear and the other.
Participating in the 24 hour news cycle (or social media cycle) makes you more like yet-another-kidney of the collective consciousness than a brain. I appreciate the kidneys in my life, but it felt so toxic to be one to others. I think I’ll go on abstaining. I’ll brew up some things myself (like this post), and enjoy the efforts of others attempting content on a longer wavelength.