my desire to be well-informed is currently at odds with my desire to remain sane.
its seven in the evening and im just getting back home from work. i woke up at five that morning. the last thing i want to do is come back to the tv blasting the news. i dont even want to hear it, let alone see it playing on the screen. i dont necessarily care if its "good" or "bad" news, im just so tired of it.
its the same story with social media in general, at times it just feels too much; having to constantly monitor my feeds just so i can keep on track with the newest social movement, the latest coup, the most recent trends, is just so ridiculous. it feels at times that ive become disconnected from the world. of course, the important things reach me, either through word of mouth or reading headlines in the elevator screen, but apart from that, i dont bother myself with actively keeping track of the news.
the word that describes how ive been feeling with regards to the news is fatigue... news fatigue being the proper term for all of this. in a nutshell, our minds, constantly flooded with information, information and more information about the world and its events, have started shutting down. i think of this popular nyt article from sipress where he notes the difficulties of needing to be informed for the sake of his work as a commentator, his dealings with news fatigue, and how he deals with that feeling.
to be honest, i cant blame anyone, not even myself, for feeling this way. the world is vast and noisy, and we are such small pieces of it. theres also sense of guilt that comes with feeling news fatigue at least for those of us who live in the west, most of the news we hear comes in a few categories; either its mass violence, or an update in the ongoing world conflicts, or some really demotivating decision made by the government. we have the privilege of being relatively detached from all of these effects. objectively, we have it good, and i think to compensate for that guilt, we have made it social requirement for everyone to stay as informed as possible. its some weird form of survivors guilt to be frank.
unfortunately, as an impressionable former teenager with access to the internet, most of my knowledge of the world came through facebook articles, tiktok videos, and instagram infographics. (on a side note, the world started going down after those infographics became the popular form of news dissemination. i understand needing the capture the aesthetic eyes of a younger generation, but it feels so unauthentic). i was a victim of this feeling of guilt for some time and felt the need to be hyper informed. i had so much energy for all this dude, but now where has that energy gone?
i had this one friend in my last period french class who'd always ask me what i thought of certain events going on in the world. we were the equivalent of jaden smith talking about the "socioeconomic and political state" of the world with his friends. i felt pressure to know things, to be well informed, and it was draining. at points id find myself watching tiktoks on news and politics while in class just so i could keep up with them. looking back on it, the friend was just spitting out the same opinions they had seen online, and if our views challenged each other, one of us would end up hurt. we were fourteen, fifteen, sixteen feeling guilt for no other reason than the media we were exposed to each day.
in similar, but more ironic fashion, the nerdy online communities i used to participate in also started to become gradually politicized as i grew older. back in 2018, i left a discord server dedicated to a webtoon i had been following for the past 2 years, solely because 13 year olds would join the server. throw profanities and insults at the one slightly conservative teenager in the server, then get banned. my friends we have detracted from the original source material...
maybe ive just grown old in general. i dont see the appeal of being informed about every minute event in the world, and i certainly dont understand the need to know every detail about a conflict to be allowed to form an opinion. do i need to read books from decades ago to be able to say that people should be afforded some dignity in how they live regardless of their financial means? why cant my opinions just be based off the principle of not being an asshole? i dont get it. of course, i dont think avoiding all news is the correct way to go about this, but limiting all news to word of mouth has been very good for me. deleting apps like instagram and twitter have been the biggest contributor to my progress, but i still find myself looking at the articles in the ms edge homepage on my work laptop. i dont feel as burdened by the need to know everything anymore. i am just a small fleck in this world, why worry so much about big picture. things around the world? this doesnt mean i dont care about current world events, rather i refuse to let myself be swallowed whole by them. i have my own life to live, as long as im living a life i perceive as morally okay and inline with my principle of not being an asshole, is that not enough?
anyways, im at work writing this. my manager and mentor are off for the week, so im at peace :P have a nice day everyone.