April Awakening: Day Eighteen
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I’ve still not been on social media. No Twitter, no Reddit, no lolcow gossip sites that I have no connection to anymore. Occasionally I’ll be taken to a linked tweet when I’m perusing my news feed, and I’ll take a quick scroll under the video to see what people say. But I don’t stay long. It barely even enters my mind to go checking these things. But I think I’ve picked up an even douchier habit in the form of anonymous replying to news articles.
Of course I still check my news sites every day. I’m still tracking the top stories of the day like I did all last year, and I’m just glad to be ‘in the know’ about what’s going on. But I’m noticing something that’s just putting me off this whole tracking thing: All my favorite outlets are beginning to report the same stories. I get covering big breaking stories, but I’m seeing the same tone of article spread out over multiple outlets. If I didn’t know better, I’d say there was some kind of weird lockstep going on here, as if to obfuscate the truth and distract the people from what’s really going on. And, since I’m just a selfish brat over here, I think it’s my commentary that’s contributing to this coordination.
The other day, I made a comment about how I felt the democrats were acting during the House Judiciary Committee’s field hearing in New York City. It was, of course, to highlight the ineffectualness of our do-nothing District Attorney Alvin Bragg, but according to the minority, it was the majority’s way of protecting Bad Orange Man from the DA’s politics prosecution. All politicians are liars, but the Dems during this hearing just sounded so disingenuous and unconcerned about the real issues New Yorkers are facing under this shoddy leadership. So I said as much on an article on one of my top outlets. When I went to another site, I scrolled down to see my exact comment, word-for-word, approved on a moderated comment article. Either someone copy-pasted my words, or AI picked it up and cross-platformed it. I have no idea if they can even do that, but I wouldn’t put it past this technology to do so. Either way, it was puzzling and bothersome to see, even as the comment got tons of likes. I’ve said on this blog many times before, I say an idea, someone else says it later and gets all the credit. Now it’s happening on my news? The one thing that, as much as I hate it sometimes, I know will always be there for me?
There’s always something in the air that leads me to believe one story can help unravel it all. I guess that’s why I check news every day. I’m waiting for that one breaking story to drop that will expose the sham so “all this can be over.” And it’s difficult when I have to go digging for the important things while distractions wallpaper the front page. You’re hard-pressed to find anything about CCP police stations in New York City, something we’ve been reporting on for months, or payments to the First Family from foreign entities, or more access to the First Son’s foreign bank records, or, God help us, the CEO of JPMorgan testifying on accounts linked to Jeffery Epstein. There’s so much going on, and perhaps the only way for me to get the news story I’m really after is to let it play out without me.
Tomorrow I begin my Cape Cod adventure. I’m hitchin’ up my wagon with the cat in tow and driving up to the coast for four days. I think in that time, I’m going to make a conscious effort to stay away from reading the news. I’m putting too much pressure on the news to go the way I think it’s going to go, and maybe out of sight, out of mind is the best course of action. I hate being that person when someone asks me, “Oh, did you see this news?” Like, fucking of course I did. I see it all. But now, I don’t want to see any little bit of it, and certainly not comment on it either. At least until I arrive back home next week. I don’t need to be back in the newsroom until Wednesday, anyway. I’m not going to leave my work phone at home, but I’ll let those thousands of emails pile up, and read about them some other time.
A vacation this time of year sounds perfect. A vacation from news might just be necessary. You can thank me later after The Big One hits.
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