Maybe too many Americans are dumb.

[jfz9580m]

126. Thank you!

You said so many things I think. I feel the same way about the new shiny shit of no use beyond distracting one. Somehow I have managed to dial them down to the lowest nuisance level.

But I have realized finally that right now part of the controls lie with me alone. So I am dialing down my smartphone and net use and regulating them.

I can almost feel my brain zombifying sometimes when I stare at the phone for hours. It was unavoidable during this election but at least now I am setting limits. When I look back at the last decade and a half of my life especially, but more broadly the past 25 years (I am 46) , I have lost more time to worthless internet stuff than anything else. For now all I can do is regulate my own behaviors. I don’t find the internet addictive so much as something you use to shut off your brain when stuck at work, which happens to me a lot. In the end, bad for work and my brain.

However I am at least relatively educated and aware. To have lie filled click bait colonize your brain all the time cannot be good for you if it is below the threshold of your awareness.

You might enjoy Carr’s blog soldierant:
https://www.roughtype.com/

(Sadly he has now moved his blog to this execrable site I cannot stand. I regret every penny I have ever given that site). The only website I’ll ever do is DU. If DU winds down some day I suppose Mastodon it is. I rather liked Mastodon (unlike my various other forays into that type of media) relatively. You had to use your brain a tad more there.

I hate the zombifying and icky feel of clickbait. I don’t know how anyone can stand it.
My one complaint with DuckDuckGo (which I use over Google) is the promotion of MSN sites for news.

MSN sites are filled with ads and hideous ones at that. The only time I was amused was when they started offering me couches during the last election cycle probably thanks to my numerous searches for “Vance and couch” ;-/. The one high point of the last election cycle silly as it was 😁.

However the election turned out I still giggle over that alone. That was organic internet silliness not a slick campaign thing -the one thing I do actually like about the internet is when human life breaks through in its organic form past all the foul commodified rot.