Social Media Abstention

My social media feeds are becoming terrible. The Presidential Election is approaching in the U.S., and a few people I follow are crazy Democrats or crazy Republicans. Yet, those few people have killed the signal-to-noise ratio of my feed.

Pointless Politics

I wouldn't even mind if these people posted anything positive about the candidate they support.

"Obama is useless!" OK. Sure, I'll bite. Why is Romney better? *blank stare*

"Romney will ruin us!" You have my attention. Why should I vote for Obama? *equally vacant stare*

If you're going to trash one side, you should be able to answer why you agree with the other side. "[politician] sucks and is evil!" is not a valid argument. If you can state why you agree with something, remember to mention those reasons occasionally in between your ravings. You'll still be a crazy, irritating asshole, but at least you'll look like an informed, crazy, irritating asshole. That's one step up on the evolutionary scale toward conspiracy-theory nutjob.

Tomorrow is the first Presidential debate. With the amount of bullshit I see posted now, I can't imagine what's going to happen between tomorrow and the election. I'm fucking done.

Twitter Television Invasion

My girlfriend watches a lot of TV. It seems like most of what she watches are terrible reality shows. People tweet about a show, and the show sometimes posts it on the screen live. Bravo seems to be the worst offender. The tweet takes up the bottom half of the screen, and there is an ad in the top-right corner. It's almost as bad as when Bill Engvall would walk out on the bottom of your screen during a show, pause it with a remote control, tell you to watch the Bill Engvall Show, then unpause and walk away, leaving an advertisement watermark in his wake. (I think that was on TBS, if my memory is correct.)

I don't have a screenshot, and I'm not looking through reality TV website to find one. You're going to have to take my word.

Next 30 Day Challenge

I'm dropping all forms of social media for the next 30 days. These networks have become a time leech on my life. Except for a few bits a pieces, I don't get anything out of them. The amount of useful information I can distill from the torrent of filler and padding isn't justified by the amount of time I waste. I open a Twitter tab every time I start to compile something to the point where it's a habit that needs to be broken.

My own "content" consists mostly of retweets rather than original thoughts.

I've come up with a new blog project as well as found a few drafts that I never finished. I'll be creating actual content again rather than text equivalent of a pointless "sound bite."