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My Information Diet

2017-03-21 · letter vlog · John · 3:24 · watch on YouTube

Topic: Internet & YouTube · mode: Personal essay

John describes 'twittering', his word for the buzzing misery the social internet gives him; turning his phone into a dumb phone hasn't worked, the feed neither informs him nor brings out the person he wants to be, so he has put himself on an information diet of newspapers and magazines and asks Nerdfighters if they feel the same.

What is said

The parts of the video and what is said in each (★ — how much it matters to the video).

00:00:00 — 'Twittering': the buzzing misery of the social internet

  • ★★ John recalls that at VidCon, while he scrolled his Twitter feed checking everyone was having a good time, a friend said he seemed stressed and he answered 'Twitter'. — 00:00:00 · VidCon, Twitter

  • ★★★ John coins 'twittering', his word for the buzzing misery the social internet fills him with: a brew of outrage, worry, exhaustion and not being able to look away. — 00:00:10 · Twittering, Twitter

    “I call this strange brew of outrage and worry and exhaustion and not being able to look away Twittering”

  • ★★★ John thinks Twitter and Facebook are useful, important and in pockets beautiful, and he has benefited a lot, but most of the time his feeling on the social internet is 'ahhh'. (hedged) — 00:00:35 · Twitter, Facebook

00:00:49 — Turning his phone into a dumb phone, and why it hasn't worked

  • ★★★ On a friend's advice, a month later after an egregious bout of twittering, John made his phone a dumb phone: no Twitter, Facebook, email or Reddit, and he deleted Pokémon Go, breaking his son's heart. — 00:00:49 · Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, Henry Green
  • ★ John admits the phone still has a browser plus Delta, Yelp, Google Maps, Chipotle and a soccer-on-TV app, so it isn't really that dumb, but he has no way of twittering. (playful) — 00:01:22
  • ★★★ John says the dumb phone hasn't worked: in seven months his background stress has decreased somewhat, but mostly he just spends more time on his computer. (hedged) — 00:01:33

00:01:45 — Twittering doesn't inform him and makes him a person he dislikes

  • ★★ John says this is partly because he feels a vague but nagging obligation to be informed about the events of the day. — 00:01:45
  • ★★★ John is not convinced twittering makes him better informed: he knows a lot about Trump's handshakes with foreign leaders but little about South Korea's ousted president, Brazil's corruption scandals or the Fed's monetary policy. (hedged) — 00:01:50 · Donald Trump
  • ★★★ John feels that inside the feed he becomes a person he dislikes: skimming instead of engaging, valuing cleverness over compassion, and clicking clickbait, which creates a world with more clickbait. (hedged) — 00:02:04 · sensationalism
  • ★★ John admits that sometimes he tells his actual real-life family 'sorry' because someone on the internet is wrong and he must explain why, and that he has even retweeted fake news. (playful) — 00:02:16

00:02:28 — The information diet: newspapers and magazines each morning

  • ★★★ John says in the last couple of weeks he has scaled way back on the social internet for an information diet: an hour or two each morning reading mostly The Economist, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and The Indianapolis Star. — 00:02:28 · The New York Times
  • ★ John explains newspapers and magazines to young people as a carefully curated internet printed on paper and mailed to your house: inefficient and too expensive, but he is desperate for a change. (playful, hedged) — 00:02:45
  • ★★ John says the early results of his information diet are positive, but it is too soon to know for sure. (hedged) — 00:02:57

00:03:04 — Asking Nerdfighters about their experience; YouTube feels less stressful; sign-off

  • ★★ John asks Nerdfighters to say in the comments whether they have similar problems with the social internet or whether his experience is an outlier. — 00:03:04 · Nerdfighteria
  • ★★ John says YouTube still feels different from the rest of the internet and less stressful, maybe because he lives in a relatively friendly and peaceful corner of it, and thanks viewers for that. (hedged) — 00:03:11 · YouTube

In the description and comments

  • ★★ The description says John is not sure whether others share his social media malaise, and is trying to sort out whether the social internet's architecture makes it inherently unhealthy for him or this is just a phase. (unsure) — video description
  • ★ John wonders whether his social media malaise is just a phase, like the time in ninth grade when he wore a trench coat for six months even though he lived in Florida and it was hot all the time. (playful) — video description · Florida

Threads in this video

Where the stories that moved here went next

Mentioned

Central: media literacy · Twitter · Twittering

Also: People: Donald Trump · Henry Green · Park Geun-hye

Projects: VidCon

Works: Pokémon Go

Organizations: Chipotle Mexican Grill · Delta Air Lines · Facebook · Federal Reserve · Reddit · The Economist · The Indianapolis Star · The New York Times · The Wall Street Journal · Yelp · YouTube

Concepts: misinformation · Monetary policy · sensationalism

Events: Operation Car Wash

Products: Google Maps

Only in the description or credits: Florida

Also centred on media literacy: I Quit Social Media. Here's How It's Going

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