Handling the Infotainment Firehose in the Era of the Digital Tabloid
Like you, I’ve consumed a hilariously unacceptable amount of infotainment this year. Whether it was staying up late to watch McCain stunt on his chamber for Repeal & Replace, staying up late and watching him NOT stunt on his chamber for the Tax Bill, or just absorbing the truly indescribable time we’ve had since Election Day 2016, I was right there with all of you. But (potentially) unlike you, I’ve been working in and around tech/social media for almost a decade now. Because of this, I’ve had a lot more time to adjust the filters, fire hoses, and blazing infernos of Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Push Notifications, e-mail lists, and dead trees pushing news, fake news, super fake news, and whatever the hell Alex Jones is frothing at the mouth about today. So, in this article, I’ll be outlining my approach to managing the deluge of information in this time, the Era of the Digital Tabloid.
Before we start — If there’s only one thing you take away from reading this, it’s that you should approach info consumption with the question of “Why?” Why are you consuming this feed/station/medium? How does the attention you’re paying to said medium benefit or enhance your life? If the answer is “because I want to learn about the world and this offering allows me to do that,” Great! If the answer is “Keep your friends close, but your enemies closer.” Also Great! If the answer is “because one of my ways to relax is to learn about how stupid celebrities are acting today,” Still Great! This self-assessment is not about morality, but about purpose. If you can’t come up with an answer, turn off that medium or source for a while and see if you miss it. You probably won’t. We are all woefully redundant in our information streams. Anyone plugged in knows the Human Centipede path of info through disparate social networks. Even a mild pruning of emails you subscribe to, pages you like, or MSM twitter accounts you follow will do wonders for your mental health.
The second best thing you can do for your sanity is to turn off push notifications for…basically everyone you’re not currently fucking or claiming as a dependent on your taxes. While I can appreciate analysts, experts, journalists, and those heavily invested in certain industries needing up-to-the-minute push information sent to their phones, if you don’t have a portfolio based reason to have them on, turn them off. All of them. Twitter/CNN/NYT/WaPo notifications are crack-y, and by that I do mean physically addictive. You develop a weird cycle of seeing the notification, reading the news and becoming upset, stressed, or despondent. This is not healthy, so restricting your consumption to when you decide, willfully, to turn that particular fire hose, on can be huge.
Mechanistically, the way to do this is simple:
Do not bounce between Twitter, Facebook and 40 news sites a day. That shit is exhausting. Titrate all of your daily information grazing into 3 funnels: Email, Web and Social.
For me, Email has the highest bar. 4 news organizations get access to my inbox on a daily basis. Four. Be brutal in unsubscribing, reporting spam and getting that shit out of your personal or professional inboxes. If an email doesn’t provide you with a single insightful link, thought, perspective or useful tidbit every single time it hits your inbox, kill it. I find that any more than a couple of these emails and you’re spending a non-insignificant amount of your day reviewing, reading & pocketing documents to review before your day has even started. Focus on morning emails that attempt to collate spheres of information and/or afternoon . For me, these are the Quartz Daily Brief & the Must Reads email that Barry Ritholtz’s Big Picture does for Bloomberg View in the morning, and the WTF Happened Today? & Foreign Policy’s 5 at 5 in the afternoon.
Web should be collated/curated into an RSS Feed reader, for you to review when you have time/want to learn about the world. I prefer Feedly as I find it’s the easiest to organize and has a non-stupid mobile option, now that Google Reader is a distant memory. As an addendum, as of Memorial Day 2017, I’d stopped consuming web-based news entirely, using just Email & Social for my primary sourcing and commentary on everything. But, other colleagues of mine remain power users of Feedly and have a web circuit they hit multiple times a day. Your mileage may vary.
Social is broken into your various networks, by creating lists and only spending a certain/specified allotment of time standing in front of the information firehose those lists create, whether it’s on Facebook, LinkedIn, Slack, Discord, or Twitter. Reddit is a slightly different beast , where the quality of the engagement is entirely dependent on the quality of the moderation and specific sub-reddit you’re in. Some, like r/CredibleDefense, r/Intelligence, r/JihadInFocus and r/AskHistorians are notable stand-outs that demand respect from posters and ban low-effort comments and trollish bullshit. The larger the sub-reddit, generally, the more of a garbage fire it is.
You’ll notice TV or Broadcast news isn’t on this list. Stop getting news from the TV. I’m not sure how else to say this. Television shows are tremendously demanding, comparative to other avenues of news consumption. Just think of how many Tweets you can read in 30 minutes. If you’re watching more than an hour of television a day, devoted to news, something you’re already getting from Facebook, Twitter, email, or your friends, honestly evaluate whether that programming is worth the tragic amount of time and attention required to consume it. And don’t give me that “oh it’s just on in the background while I work” because you’re either working and not absorbing it, or you’re watching it and not working. Watching a single commentator like Chris Hayes or Christiane Amanpour, is worlds better than consuming these channels in batch. Tom Nichols, a lifetime Republican and Naval War College professor, recently tried to get through Fox News primetime, and it almost broke him.
Now that you know how to whittle down your sources, how should you choose who to follow? Here are a few helpful guiding questions:
1. Were they nowhere near getting it right during the 2016 election cycle? Think hard about why you’re giving these people another chance. Especially if they continue to be wrong on the Iraq War, the War on Drugs, the War on Terror, or the War for your Data. (I’m looking at you Bill Kristol.)
2. Are they currently normalizing, excusing or “seeking to understand” fascism, xenophobia or violent rhetoric? Certain outlets are engaging in stupid amounts of “whataboutism” and “bothsiderism” at the moment. Both should be rejected on face. Good journalism doesn’t need to mention a “different side” to tell a story or deliver data-driven analysis.
3. Were they just as right in 2016 (or even 2015) as they were in 2017? Do they examine their positions and admit their mistakes? Listen closely to people who predicted the rise of Trump or helped put his rise into context, and I don’t mean the asshole on your feed who has been gaslighting women for 6 months. The organizations and commentators who didn’t see this coming are far enough behind the curve that their voices are less necessary in the world of infinite choice. No sense listening to the person posting on Facebook the story that you read on an obscure sub-Reddit 72hrs ago.
When possible, follow Experts/Journalists, not Outlets/Channels. This tactic has become crucial to me over the last year. Not only do reporters generally re-tweet/share emerging content cross-brand (i.e. NYT reporters share non-NYT content, NYT Twitter never does), but they’re connected to networks you’re not. The ones worth their salt will be your greatest source for emerging info, and have become invaluable in my information screening process in 2017. Do your own digging and find people who challenge, inform, and inspire you. A (very) abbreviated list of some of my favorites is at the bottom of this post.
That being said, if you’re going to consume news from any source regularly, understand their bias. Who funds them, who is on their board of directors, and what history do they have when it comes to reporting on the issues that are important to you? Instead of reading one more article by them, throw shit into Google and find out. When following news organizations, understand how that organization makes its money, how it treats its workers, and what recourse those workers have against LA Weekly & Gothamist style reprisals from kleptocratic. If you need organizations, some less echo-chamber sources are World Politics Review, The Globe and Mail, The Knight Foundation, The Center for Public Integrity, Center for Investigative Reporting, ProPublica, Foreign Policy and The Baffler.
Once you’ve picked people to follow, Pay Them. Either directly, through donations on their pages or to their Patreon, or indirectly through subscribing to publications they do work for. If there’s a website you like or an author you support, send them dollars monthly. That’s the only true bulwark against the tide of ad-driven fake news. Plus, these journalists are much less well compensated than the revenue numbers of the organizations that they work for would imply.
A couple of side notes to address what you’re thinking:
Yes, it’s important to understand sites outside of your personal bubble. Be honest about your tolerance levels to it. While lots of people will recommend reading Breitbart or Zero Hedge every day being important to prevent “bias,” if all it does is make you angry and you spend an hour arguing on Facebook Monday to Friday, it’s not helping. My suggestion is to be aware of the bias of one network or another, and try to compensate. For example, my email subscriptions lean centrist/right-of-center, as does part of my Twitter feed, so my Facebook feed and Web reading lilts left. This may not work for you, so spend lots of time experimenting. Do not waste your time consuming media you blatantly disagree with. You’re not going to give it a chance and your blood pressure will not thank you. Instead, try to find a source that’s 50% of the way to “I HATE ALL OF THIS” and work your way left or right, as your tolerance allows.
Also, if you are working on a particular issue or advocacy, you need to understand what both sides of your ideological divide are saying, every day, backwards and forwards. So these points are not to be construed as the minimum required for professionals. If you really want to be taken seriously as an amateur/poser on social media, spend a couple of hours looking for both advocates who really resonate with you and adversaries who you really dislike. Track how the argument and policy back-and-forth moves over time using industry white papers, LinkedIn groups, topic based groups on Facebook, LinkedIn & Reddit, but strive to only spend large amounts of time in groups that have heavy moderation that have no tolerance for spammers, trolls and griefers. Getting into fights on r/The_Donald all day is not the solution for any problem, and will not make you a better rhetorical debater or policy analyst. There are respected voices in any policy discussion, from International Security & Tax Policy to LBGTQ Rights & Free Speech Protections. Find them and start listening before you pop off on Twitter.
In thanks for getting this far, here’s a picture of a Capybara getting along with all manner of creatures. Be safe out there in your information consumption, it’s been a long year, and 2018 will bring more of the same.
P.S. Don’t let any of this keep you from staying in digital and physical contact with the people care about. Hug your loved ones and talk about your hopes and dreams with them. Pepper your reality with things you’re working on, that matter to you, and that you enjoy. Doing so will help you keep your mind on what’s important, the people and things that you care about. Many thanks to Zay once again for the inspiration for this post, for being an Impresario Emeritus of No Proscenium, and for being an all-around spectacular person.
Appendix — People of Note
Sarah Kendzior — Sarah Kendizor is basically the Cassandra of the great American fall. She’s been doing real research and breaking ground on stories associated with topics the MSM is only now arriving at. If you only follow one person, follow her.
Robert Samuels — His domestic reporting has become one of my main windows into the American experience. Looking for the story within the story, his narratives are always relevant. Also, his figure skating coverage is second to none.
Adam Khan — A lot of his reporting is built around these massive chains of screenshots, citations and primary sourcing on Twitter. This guy has been digging in, for years, to the stuff Mueller is just arriving at now. One of the select few that I’ve seen people call fake news, then eat crow when he’s been proven correct.
Sarah Topol — Her work on Lethal Autonomous Weapons Systems for Buzzfeed in 2016 was my favorite piece of journalism of the year. A foreign correspondent of deep competence and intense rigor, she’s reported from more countries than most Americans can name.
Charles Ornstein — Excellent healthcare reporting and perspective on the complexity of the system.
Brandy Jensen — If she comes back, one of the most insightful, caustic, and tired-of-your-shit representatives of Socialist Feminism I’ve ever seen. Also, she’s hysterical.
Shawn Carrie — One of my go to reporters for Central Asia, Turkey, and Caucasus region reporting. If you’re into foreign policy, get on it. (For a deeper Turkey focus, I recommend Selim Sazak)
David Roth — My personal favorite writer of 2017. Whether about football or politics, a rare gift that I hope is being monitored for stimulant use and other HST-styled bad habits.
Maia Szalavitz — Unapologetic reporter of the failure of the War on Drugs and the Fentanyl epidemic (Also see Terry Gotham, for info on Fentanyl and other novel psychoactive substances).
Angus Johnston — CUNY professor who drops massive knowledge bombs about the history of activism and agitation in the context of recent events.
Anthony Oliveira — Newly-minted PhD. who knows more about comics, geek culture and obscure trivia than you do. Hot takes and cool insight on mundane facets of nerd culture.
Jennifer Hofmann — Started an organizing weekly Google Doc that spiraled into being a hub of actionable information that rivals most local ground game for elected officials.
Sarah Jeong — Her live tweets of the Travel Ban sessions were at once the informative and entertaining recountings of something so boring it could make C-SPAN blush. Her perspective on law & technology is crucial.
The Ritholtz Crew — Barry, Michael, Josh, and Anthony. Some of the most brutally honest financial minds in the world. Tireless advocates for the little guy, and Josh is only a bro occasionally. If anyone in your family is a teacher, Anthony’s financial perspective is irreplaceable.
Bob Lefsetz — The only critic/art commentator I follow. Has the perspective only decades can bring, but still makes insightful cracks about genres and artists that are younger than some of his aches and pains from the ski slope. If you work in music, the arts, or want to move to LA someday, Bob is a must follow.
Popehat — His Lawsplainers and blog posts are some of the best legal writing for civilians on the internet. Popehat on Twitter might even be better, especially when low-rent “legal” twitter tries to yell at him.
Haley Byrd — DC Reporter for the Independent Journal Review. Exhaustively detail-oriented and lover of all things Congress and dog. Also may or may not have bonked a sitting member of Congress with her notebook during the ACA repeal fight.
Kristin Soltis Anderson — If you follow/read Frank Luntz, stop that today and start following Kristin. Expert polling analysis and a much needed breath of data-driven rationality in the world of 2017 Roy Moore Republicans. Also not the Student Congress debater.