The Cleanse

I’m in the midst of a media cleanse. This started before the election when I canceled my Washington Post subscription. Jeff Bezos can do whatever he wants with the Washington Post, and he’s 100% correct that I don’t trust large media organizations.

After the election, I removed all news sources from Feedly except the Atlantic because I find their writing informative and compelling.

A friend calls this turtling. Pulling your head inside your shell and hiding. It’s quite comfortable here. With most of my free time, I’m leveling a dragon Holy Priest in World of Warcraft. #ama

I’ve slowly retreated from all social media with the exception of LinkedIn since around the time of the first Trump presidency.

Today, my only social presence is on LinkedIn, and even there, I’m not nearly as active as I used to be.

I think it’s mainly because when I would share an article like this one with my thoughts, I’d get next to no replies to it. There’s very little incentive for me to want to share things if I’m all but guaranteed no one will see it.

On here, though? I’ll at least get an occasional message from someone who liked an article I shared. In fact, it’s way more meaningful when I do, because it always leads to a deeper conversation.

Reading blog entries and books and long-form essays like those shared on The Atlantic are like eating salad compared to the fast food that people keep trying to cram down our throats in the form of incendiary attacks on people who are different from us.