As I transition from the algorithm-driven chaos of platforms like X, Reddit, and others to more manual information sources like Micro.blog, RSS feeds, and newsletters, I’ve come face to face with a nagging fear of missing out.
What did I miss while I was sleeping, working, or otherwise detached from my usual internet habits?
The algorithm, though toxic in many ways, was also a sort of companion, offering me snippets of news I might have overlooked during my offline hours. What’s happened in Eastern Europe? What’s the latest in the Mideast? What about the cartel civil war in Mexico? These are just a few examples that come to mind. This brings me to a larger point: all of this surface-level information doesn’t really enlighten me. Instead, it feeds into an old vice I’ve been trying to overcome—my addiction to presentism or anachronism.
The stories unfolding in Europe, Mexico, the Mideast—they’re far from finished. Without a clear resolution, there can be no true understanding of these events: no insight into their long-term outcomes, causes, or effects. Yes, these crises feel urgent in the moment, and for some, they’re undoubtedly dramatic. But in time, will we look back at these fast-moving stories with the same anxiety that some of us feel today? I doubt it.
As CS Lewis once wrote to his brother Warnie
I am afraid the truth is in this, as in nearly everything else I think about at present, that the world, as it is now becoming and has partly become, is simply too much for people of the old square-rigged type like you and me. I don’t understand its economics, or its politics, or any dam’ thing about it.
As much as I’m happy to regain control over my information and my data, there’s still a void left by the old, algorithmic “For You” pages that once greeted me with a constant stream of new things to worry about. There was a strange comfort in that—a comfort that I now find missing.