I reword this essay seconds after I just saw the tag line from a health guru I follow, discussing the link between face to face interaction and longevity. The science community has recently tagged news addiction more appropriately as headline stress disorder. It took me getting aggrevated at my old google email account to really want to consider the matter in a sense of urgency. Wanting to produce a new email handle that sounded more professional, I sought out to change it on my old gmail account in December 2022. Having forgot passwords and what not, I got locked out. Calling, messaging and cursing Google to answer my responses to get me started was no luck (of course it wasn’t, it never is with gargantuan tech companies). So, out of spite I went back to AOL. AOL being a tech equivalent of the burned out hippy who is years past his prime, still does everything completely annoying to attempt to stay relevant. Try waiting a second on your ‘AOL mail’ site after pondering the next email to open. Shazam! Your feed goes directly to ‘luxurious’ news feeds, without your permission, concerning headlines such as:
“Reese Witherspoon hits back at critics grossed out that she at snow”
“Jason Kelce’s Daughter Reacts To His Viral Shirtless Moment At The Chiefs Game”
Everyone knows, I guess except those who are dumb, that we are becoming a much dumber society. We are becoming a more isolated one while we are becoming dumber. That’s a terrible combination. Last fall I found a course for sixty dollars offered by the University of Miami (FL.) Division of Continuing & International Education called Communication Literacy in the Age of Misinformation. One of the primary reasons I started taking online course during 2020’s pandemic was to have something productive to occupy my time against the very temptation of banal news feeds. With this particular course my endeavor comes full circle in a way that incidentally mocks the issue. It’s a wise wager I will sign up for this course no later than two months from now.
Reader, what ever you do to occupy your time away from news feeds, social media; it is time well served. If you are a potential candidate, you cannot have a sharp mind going forward by feeding yourself with some of the drek that is out there. Constituent, you cannot either. Quite frankly what we are viewing on television and online has everything to do with the socio/political peril we find ourselves in now. Everyone knows about addictions such as food, drug, sex and gambling. ‘Doom feeds’ and other assorted news slants produce the same type of chemicals in the same regions of the brain as all of those drugs do………………….ones we’ve been warned about. I’m ‘preaching to the choir’ here. I myself still struggle with putting down my phone when there is a perfectly great performance on a classic DVD. When there is a room full of love, that all of the sudden doesn’t seem to be enough.
-J
#doomscrolling
#alabamapolitics
#newsaddiction
