Culture

Cultural Noise

Javier Feliú

13 Sep 2024 — 1 min read

When it comes to news events, I often waver on a line. The line itself is the event, and each side is represented by how relevant and how quickly I need to hear the news.

Normally, we think we need to know everything right away. But most of the time, we don’t. This realization can free us to check updates only when they’re truly relevant.

Knowing where tornadoes are landing while a hurricane wreaks havoc across my location is useful if I’m driving home from the hardware store. Those live updates matter. But in our current context, which is not life or death, most other events can wait a few hours or days.

One category is especially pervasive: political and cultural news.

While these types of news events are important to us as citizens and members of society, social media platforms can overwhelm us with a constant flow of updates. Scrolling through X (formerly Twitter) is like opening a fire hose of news, and I’ve found it to be the most politically charged of all social platforms. Instagram and others are similar, but X especially amplifies political content.

Crafting how we consume news can significantly improve our productivity. We should decide when to check the news, not let our brain’s dopamine response be at the mercy of an algorithm.

Until next time,

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