I would say that I started Doom Scrolling when Headline News came out with the 15 minute news cycle. Today we have Facebooks and Twitters and Reddits with endless scrolling of all the horrible news going on, and on, and on. While I do think it is important to be informed there is a limit at which the information is useful.
My personal vice is Reddit’s Popular page. I can scroll on that page anytime of the day. While not all of it is Doom and Gloom enough of it is to keep me going for more. The problem is that apart from some funny gifs that I share with friends it is mostly a waste of time. I could spend that same time reading industry news or learning something technical.
The solution is that I am updating my NetNewsWire to only have feeds that fit some sense of utility:
- Industry related: WordPress, hosting, cloud computing, etc
- Business related: Seth Godin’s site is a great example here
- Focused posts: For the most part the sites should be talking about a specific topic(s). There can be some posts about personal life but unless I know them personally I am not as interested
The internet and web are amazing. We can all easily publish anything anytime and anyone with access to the web can read it. This is also a problem as there is way more information than we can review in our lifetimes. Finding a balance of information versus entertainment is a challenge. Realizing when we are sucked into someone’s algorithim based on fury and rage is a skill we must learn and practice.
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