Let’s delete the internet of venting

The point of blowing off steam is to get rid of pressure, not to share it with the world.

Before Facebook became the battlefield of fake news, it was everyone’s favorite place to vent.

It felt so natural; like you were venting to all your friends and family at once.

On the internet, you can vent anything to anyone at any time. If you’re good at manipulating algorithms, you can get quite a lot of people to hear your venting, including many people you don’t know very well, or at all. There are obvious benefits to being good at venting, and to honing that skill.

But here’s the thing about a vent.

A vent isn’t designed to make noise. Vents don’t shout things from rooftops, or make up haphazard hashtags to show how clever they are.

A vent exists for only one purpose: To release pressure so that a thing don’t explode from whatever’s building up inside it.

Negative energy is one of those things that can build up inside you. When it does, there are exactly two ways you can get rid of it with a positive outcome:

• You vent, and let the energy escape you.
• Or you channel it into something productive or creative, like art or music or your work.

The problem with Facebook, for example, is that it makes you feel like you’re doing both of these things — venting, and being productive…