Crap News Fatigue…Let Me Tell You About It…
I was reading a news article yesterday about the guy who let the Crumbleys into his art loft and they started hiding out in it. It said he didn’t watch the news, so he had no idea they were on the run. The cops believe him. Reading that article, I believed him too. Reading the news these days is very stressful for me, and I’m a Nixon/Vietnam/Cold War/Duck And Cover/Kennedy and King assassinations era kid. But commercial mainstream news is way different now than it was then.
Case in Point: The current feckless mainstream media howling about the Vice President’s personal security tactics. I’ve seen nothing about it that strikes me as anything other than completely sensible for a person in her position now, and back when she was California AG. Politico did an entire thing the other day about the fact that Harris uses wired earbuds instead of Bluetooth.
Most commercial news these days is crap, designed to keep us agitated because apparently that keeps us addicted to it. I have a carefully curated Google news page and some select Twitter accounts I follow for links, but I am careful to look for sources that, like Joe Friday once said, are just the facts ma’am. And when I feel myself getting wired I break off and go do something else.
It’s a struggle to stay informed and sane at the same time these days. I don’t blame the poor guy who let in the Crumbleys for not paying attention to the news. On the other hand it nearly got him arrested as an accomplice. Ignorance is bliss like heroin is.
[UPDATE…] The comments to that twitter thread by Alex Thompson of Politico are withering. Tons of IT folks weighing in about wireless security and Bluetooth. But my favorite is the user who called Politico the Tiger Beat of the Potomac. Yeah…that. Exactly.