Jan-Lukas Else

Thoughts of an IT expert

Finding peace in ignorance

Published on in 💭 Thoughts
Short link: https://b.jlel.se/s/6ce
AI generated summary: The author used to be addicted to constantly refreshing their feed reader and reading news articles, but now they have become less interested in news and have a backlog of articles they want to read later, which they attribute to spending less time on social media and having a more fulfilling life outside of news consumption.

During and after my studies, I used to refresh my Miniflux start page (the feed reader, which I use to keep up with things on websites I want to follow) every few minutes. As soon as there was a new article, I would read it. I also used to use this tool to read the news by following a local national newspaper website.

But times have changed. It seems that I’m much less addicted to news now. It happens that bookmarks for things I want to read later stay in my bookmarks list for days, weeks, or even months. And the newspaper site I subscribe to these days has a similar feature to mark articles I want to read later. This list is huge, since I don’t seem to keep up with the news that much anymore. I even have articles from March that still interest me, but I have not had the time or inclination to read them.

It’s probably an effect of spending less time on social media. I don’t have Twitter anymore (for a few years now), I recently logged out of my reddit account, and I don’t check Mastodon as often and have reposts disabled there, so I only see stuff that people post themselves and the number of people I follow is small.

But it’s also the effect of having a less boring job. Having one (and a half) households to take care of. And finally, sticking to a fitness routine again.

I can’t complain, I think it’s a good thing to be less addicted to news. It’s just something I’ve noticed.

After all, most of the stuff in the news isn’t really interesting. It’s stuff to get people to click on the article, to get your attention for a few minutes. Most breaking news stories aren’t relevant the next day.

Jan-Lukas Else
Interactions & Comments