Distraction Is the Whole Point

How the deluge of irrelevant and misleading information keeps us from focusing on what truly matters

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Last week, President Donald Trump signed an executive order banning paper straws.

No, I didn’t exactly seek out this information. It crept into my feed, and instead of ignoring it, my eyes and mind betrayed me, lingering on yet another piece of manufactured noise disguised as news.

This whole plastic vs. paper straw debate is itself a distraction, too. Plastic pollution is undeniably a massive issue, that’s true, but plastic straws make up only a tiny fraction of the problem. In the ocean, for instance, they account for just 0.025% of the 8 million tons of plastic trash. Ban them or unban them — the overall impact remains rather negligible, while the world’s biggest plastic polluters continue their damage unchecked.

Still, whether it’s debates over minor sources of plastic waste or news about those debates or sensationalised political theatrics packed with ‘alternative facts,’ baseless claims, and outright fiction, so much of today’s information landscape seems to serve one purpose only: to distract us from what truly matters. Of course, somewhere in the mix, there’s still the real real news and stories that actually warrant our attention. But trying…