Too much Internet

One of my Facebook friends (actually more of an acquaintance) has decided to give it up. I certainly respect her decision. I've found some useful information on Facebook, and I've been able to reconnect with a lot of long-lost friends, classmates and coworkers. But Facebook can also be a huge timesink. Time isn't a big problem for me at this stage of my life, but I can see where other, busier people would find Facebook an annoying habit that intrudes on their other activities.

My personal problem with Facebook isn't the time I spend with it, but the general pointlessness of what I read, and, frankly, what I post. I've picked up some gems of wisdom, but they've been few and far between. I quit visiting my regular coffee shop in part because I found myself trapped between two or three simultaneous conversations about things that didn't interest me. Facebook produces a similar effect: a lot of what strikes me as conversational noise.

Actually, the whole Internet is starting to wear me down. As you know if you've been reading this blog awhile, I don't own a TV. I can't stand the barrage of commercials, nor the hyperkinetic animations and visuals that seem to be always running, even popping up over programming. I hate the hours of 'information' programming in which the same two dozen pundits and spokespeople yell over each other.

That's television, but the Internet is starting to be the same way. I'm tired of visiting web sites where there are three animated advertisements running at the same time — and they're all for the same thing. I'm tired of the increasingly shrill political bloggers whose alarmist headlines lead to nothing more than a snarky critique of something some other shrill blogger wrote — which may be nothing more than a slam of a third blogger. I'm tired of 'news' about celebrities I've never heard of.

I make my daily round of my regular websites, which include The Huffington Post, Firedoglake, Crooks and Liars, Eschatonblog, Hullaballoo, io9, Slashfilm, Gawker and macsurfer, and after I'm done I just feel like I've littered my mind with the intellectual equivalent of fast food wrappers and cigarette butts. And then there's reddit and Twitter, which dump even more irrelevant junk data between my ears. Why do I keep reading this stuff?! I think it's because I have nothing else to do.

But just as I struggle with clutter in my house, I also have to struggle with clutter in my brain. I've got to find a substitute for this intellectual junk food.

And there's my 2,000th post.