When I returned to work today, many of my colleagues mentioned how they tuned out the news while they were unemployed. “Reading the news just made me angry,” said many of them. I can sympathize with that sentiment. There’s not much good news to be had at the moment, what with all the talk about debt default, climate weirding, and oppressive regimes overseas. Avoiding the news seems like a sensible prescription for better mental health and a happier disposition.
But I’m not one of those people who can tune out. If I don’t scan my newsfeeds at least a couple times a day, a general sense of unease settles over me. It’s probably a mild case of OCD exacerbated by Twitter and the like. If I could physically manipulate my iPhone during commutes and waits in checkout lines, my compulsion would be even more apparent. All this time spent absorbing the world’s dysfunctional behavior probably isn’t doing anything to improve my own catalog of neuroses, but it does give me some small and amorphous sense of control. That desire for control is probably what drives most information junkies. We know we’re all powerless against the tidal forces shaping world events, but we secretly hope that whatever scraps of information we glean from our constant scanning can somehow be fitted into the edifices of our own lives. It makes no sense, I know, but that won’t stop me opening Google Reader as soon as I’m done with this post.
You could have studied psychology, Marc, and then write books about human behaviour in your elegant style.