incurably informed

The title comes from Pat Cadigan's Synners, a cyberpunk (is there a cyberpunk anymore?) novel about interconnectivity and relationships and AI. People figure out how to connect neurally to the internet, a virus gets into the system and chaos ensues.

The "incurably informed" are the people who survive the virus and have to figure out how to live with a new reality. My reality is about the same as it's ever been, but I was feeling incurably informed a couple of weeks ago.

I can blame it on the political season, which has been fraught. There was something new in the mix for me this time around and it was social media. In 2008, the time I spent online was in the comment sections of blogs. Although you get to know people through their comments -  their styles, preferences, prejudices, and so on - they weren't intimate places. It was easy to get into fights or disagree, but it didn't feel personal. Social media, especially Facebook, is different. It feels extremely personal.

I've been a member of a private FB group for four or five years now. The group is majority white, largely over-educated, with an age-range from about 23 to 70 or so. For the most part, it's been a great place for discussions of all sorts of things, movies, comics, music, books, politics. This summer has made it a less great place. More people are on edge. There have been a number of blowups and I found myself waking up every morning, checking the feed and feeling angry and anxious for hours. But I would keep checking in throughout the day, sometimes commenting and sometimes not, but there would be this undercurrent of tension, as though I was simmering.

The public FB page wasn't much better, The private group had always been a refuge from the stuff that people posted there. I know people, am friends with people who believe in chelation therapy, who are intensely and publicly religious (I am an atheist), who are terrified of all GMOs, who repost discredited memes. I have one old friend who posts lovely images, but she's an outlier there.

The refuge was less a refuge all the time, so I decided to take a break last week. I took FB off my phone and tablet.. I took the URL out of the saved bookmarks and I stopped logging in a week ago. it was hard at first. Social media was where I went when I was procrastinating about work or avoiding making a decision. It was also where I got most of my news. The first days were a struggle, but by midweek it was ok and by Friday, I wasn't really tempted.

I got a lot of work done. I have been less angry (and believe me, if I had been on during the Democratic convention, I would have been a tower of rage). Today I was going to go back and right at this moment, I'm not sure I want to dive back into the scrum.