Do You Limit Your Information Diet?
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Do you limit your information diet at all — e.g., limiting the time you spend on gossip sites or social media sites where the algorithm controls what you see? What about general news and, these days, political news? On the flip side, is there information that you make yourself consume even though you don't necessarily want to — either to bear witness to what's happening in the world, educate yourself on boring topics, or more?
I was just reading a story about how Orlando Bloom actually owns Katy Perry's mansion, which Chris Pratt is currently renting, which is part of a huge 5-year debacle where she and the owner agreed to buy the mansion and then he reneged.
How did I find this story? Um, not sure. (Actually, I think it was a sponsored link at the bottom of a WSJ story about Lisa Cook.) Did I read this story more closely than I have a lot of news stories lately? Sadly, yes. Do I particularly care or like about any of these people? Nope, not really.
The Rooster Story
Today was a one-off, but I do feel like continually over the years I've had to pull myself back from some not-great information consumption habits, like spending hours (daily!) on gossip sites like Oh No They Didn't or reading too closely news that just does not affect my life at all.
In the 1940 screwball comedy His Girl Friday, there's a joke near the end where they've gotten all the details on bad government actors and Hildy (the reporter and main character, played by Rosalind Russel) is writing the front page story, and Walter (her editor and love interest, played by Cary Grant) is on the phone with the typesetters, removing stories left and right to make room for the story. “Take Hitler and stick him on the funny pages!” he says, and a minute later “no, no, keep the rooster story… that's human interest.”
{psst: here was the Corporette discussion of His Girl Friday… }
So I think of these stories as “rooster stories” — ones that truly do not matter in the scheme of things but are interesting to us in the moment. Sometimes it's a tragedy that you're following way too closely… or a law suit… or an engagement… but sometimes it's just random stuff you click on because the headline is interesting.
(Or, these days, those awful AITA/Reddit type posts that you find everywhere from your Facebook feed to 30-page slideshows on MSN…)
I try to limit my own consumption of rooster stories, I guess, in a few ways. First, I try to read my newspapers first thing in the morning, ideally before I have to take my youngest to school — there is limited time, and while I do let myself click on dumb stories, I'm only allowed to read the first paragraph before I move on. (This is a system that does work for newspapers, which should be written in reverse pyramid form, but does not work for those horrible slideshows where they drag every thought out.) Personally I try to read The New York Times daily, and The Wall Street Journal on Sundays, and I should probably make specific days to read my other paid subscriptions also.
Second, I use screentime tools to limit the time I can spend on various apps or websites where not much good comes from it — in iOS you can limit your own screentime, and I also like the app Forrest (either on my iPhone or as a Chrome Extension) to set time periods where those sites are just totally blocked for me.
Finally, while celebrity gossip is always fun, I really try to limit it really strictly — if anything is truly important or earth shattering I'll hear about it through conversation. I no longer allow myself to go to websites like ONTD, and I try to avoid following accounts like @deuxmoi (or unfollow them if I've broken down).
Readers, how about you — do you limit what information you consume? How do you do it, and why do you do it? Do you notice differences in yourself when you're either consuming too much or less than you have?
