💀 Greg's Newsletter Stops Doomscrolling [No. 076]

I've enabled audio for this newsletter, so if you would rather listen to my sultry voice talk about the news, then do it! And let me know if you do. Might be something I start doing regularly, except next time with a real mic and audio software instead of my Airpods and phone.

[Image: The Seattle Times]

Not sure about you, but I've been struggling with doomscrolling, especially over these past few weeks in Texas, which became a COVID-19 hotspot thanks to opening the state too early. I hit up Judge Clay Jenkins' Twitter each afternoon and then read the fallout and analysis of what today's coronavirus numbers mean for Dallas and for Texas.

Now Trump is deploying masked federal officers to detain protesters in unmarked vans, on spurious legal grounds. They're not even trained to do the things they're being asked to do. They've made the situation worse in Portland and despite pleas from local and state officials to leave, the DHS has carried on and very well might be taking Trump's fascist suppression to other cities around the country. The party of limited government and states' rights!

I am terrified of what November will look like. And what January will look like if he loses but refuses to acknowledge the vote.

(On a related note: my brother is a lead plaintiff in a class-action lawsuit against the Portland police, DHS, and U.S. Marshalls, which seeks to block the militaristic attacks on journalists and protesters.)

Anyways, it's perhaps a little ironic (self-defeating?) for me to be filling your inbox with the very kind of content that I'm going to talk about taking a break from, but maybe I need to write this and get it out to the world more than you need this. Who knows.

But doomscrolling—reflexively refreshing your feeds for hours on end, watching disparaging story after disparaging story come in—is bad. It can seriously fuck with your mental health and anxiety levels. This is not to say that you (or I) should ignore the news. We must be aware and call out the bad things happening—police brutality, systemic racism, reckless and deadly coronavirus policy. But we have to take some break from all the fucking things. Social media platforms and mobile devices are designed to keep you coming back for more. The content you see within is often the most polarizing or extreme, triggering a steady stream of reaction and emotion. It's not a great combination right now! There's another meta variable in all of this, which is the death of local journalism, but we'll dig into that later.

All those self-help articles from the past about how to break the cycle of addiction to your mobile device probably apply here, and would be a good start. NPR wrote up a quick guide specific to breaking the doomscrolling cycle, which includes setting a timer, staying cognizant of why you opened up your phone, and figuring out how to build positive emotions in our lives (which lol).

So, yeah, anyways. Maybe I wrote this bit for myself, more than anything. But if you're creating unneeded anxieties and depression with this, this could be a soft nudge in the right direction.

Here are some stories and links that have been of interest:

• MAGA types and GOP politicians recently flocked from Twitter to a social media platform called Parler in the name of free speech and anti-censorship or something. As it turns out, Parler has weird, very restrictive terms of service and they've done lots of banning and content removal. And so Parler is falling apart. That matters little because a walled off section of the internet doesn’t do much to amplify racism. Twitter is perfectly suited for right wing outrage, so everyone will still have their megaphones.

• The Reuters Digital News Report 2020 found that young folks are increasingly turning to Instagram, Snapchat, and WhatsApp for news and information which, yeah. People are most concerned about misinformation spreading from domestic politicians. The Washington Post did a summary and you can read the whole thing at the hyperlink above.

• Somewhat related: Gen Z and millennials have increasingly different news consumption habits. Gen Z is getting more news from social media than ever before, while millennials are getting less of their news from social—likely due to weariness of misinformation, and turning to other sources like newsletters. And HEY! look at that: statistically speaking, you, reader, are probably a millennial learning of some news through this newsletter.

That's it for today's very uplifting, cheery, not-at-all-anxiety-inducing newsletter.