Letter from... my social media feeds
The secret to not wasting all your time on social media (without cutting it out entirely)
Over the last five years or so I have written several blog posts and articles for this newspaper and its website on the topic of time management on the internet. With particular focus on how to lock yourself away from social media so that you don’t get sucked in only to realize, three hours later, that you’ve got nothing done the whole day, half-composed emails loiter all over your computer screens, and you are very, very angry but not entirely sure why.
In the past I have suggested solutions to limit this problem that have almost always focused on the demand side, if you will, of the problem. Namely, how to use apps to lock yourself away from the social web so that you don’t get sucked in. But earlier this month—or was it late last month?—I stumbled upon a Twitter conversation that pointed me in a new direction and towards new techniques of social media control in particular and news consumption in general.
I was scrolling through the timeline of the excellent football journalist and ESPN columnist Michael Cox. I have been reading Cox’s work for some time now. He is that rare football journalist who does not stoop to hyperbole, banter, or cliché to pad up thin analyses. Cox thinks about football seriously and writes about it articulately. And, perhaps most telling of all, he has this brusque but not rude manner on Twitter that is emblematic of anybody who has too many important things to say in 140-character instalments. (Always keep an eye out for good writers who are bad tweeters. Genius lurks within.)
The particulars of the conversation Cox was having is irrelevant. Cox and somebody else were tweeting about how a footballer, Arsenal’s French striker Olivier Giroud perhaps, was underrated. And then somebody shared a link to an article on underrated footballers. At which point one of the tweeters, not Cox I am sure, pointed out that it made little sense to react to reactions.
Suddenly time stood still. My eyes widened. And a moment of 100%, free-range, full-fat, artisanal epiphany hit me in the face with a resounding but satisfying thump.
Thump.
Don’t react to reactions.
That was it. In those four words this unknown tweeter had distilled all news consumption wisdom that is relevant to this day and age.
From that moment onwards I have been trying to implement a new iron rule in my news and social media consumption: Don’t react to reactions. Don’t even consume reactions to reactions. And if possible, along with second-order reactions, also avoid most first-order reactions.
Let me explain what must sound like the ravings of an insane but ruggedly sexy madman.
Let us assume that something important has happened in the world. Say, the government has passed a new law about something. Anything. This, of course, is news of the highest relevance. You must read this. Shortly afterwards, especially on social media, you will get first-order reactions to this news of various types. From journalists, columnists, foreign correspondents, sportspeople, celebrities, stand-up comedians, food bloggers, etc. These first-order reactions can be useful and often amusing. There is room in all our lives for some light comedy and gentle repartee.
However, and often within nanoseconds, the second-order reactions start coming in. The reactions to reactions. What the stand-up comedian thought of the columnist’s reaction. What the columnist thought of the editor’s reactions. What the editor thought of the comedian’s reaction. And thus the spiral begins. These reactions to reactions are as useless as a Malayali in a modesty competition.
The secret to a happy, stress-free life on social media, and a fulfilling relationship with news in general, is to develop a highly selective filter to second-order reactions. There are rare cases in which these reactions are useful.
Sometimes a columnist’s rebuttal to a head of state’s tweet in reaction to a news development can be useful. Sometimes these second-order reactions can be amusing or even hilarious. But often they serve utterly no purpose. (In the same way that readers responding to other readers’ comment on a news website is almost always a pile of flaming despair.)
Over the last three weeks or so I have been trying to implement a strict second-order-reaction filter on the kind of headlines and social media updates I engage with. The first thing I noticed was how much more manageable the fire hose that news has become. Like me, if you slowly develop the ability to glance past reactions-to-reactions-tweets, your timeline appears much more informative and sociable.
This filter also works on other platforms. I think twice, at least, before reading, say, an opinion columnist reacting to another opinion columnist or a book reviewer reacting to another reviewer’s review of a book. One thing I avoid like the plague are news stories manufactured entirely out of reactions. Namely those “This lady said something stupid about demonetization, and Twitter ripped her to shreds" type listicles.
Those stories entirely capitalize on the highly addictive nature of higher-order reactions.
Which is why it is hard work trying to keep those filters in place. But I do recommend that all of you give it a shot. Combine this approach with a strict rationing of the time you spent on social media. The end results may surprise you.
Letter From... is Mint on Sunday’s antidote to boring editor’s columns. Each week, one of our editors—Sidin Vadukut in London and Arun Janardhan in Mumbai—will send dispatches on places, people and institutions that are worth ruminating about on the weekend.
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