Lost in the bathtub
Editor’s Note
I admit it—I’m addicted to Maisonneuve magazine’s MediaScout. The e-digest of stories from Canada’s major media helps me keep up with what’s going on in the (news) world, and verify each day that it didn’t end while I was sleeping or glued to a computer doing editor-type things.
With the time I save not reading five newspapers and watching two newscasts, I glance at The New York Times online, scan the UK Guardian and take a look the Tyee and Rabble. And then there are the blogs, (so many blogs!). I also look at The Globe and Mail’s news alerts every morning my spam folder doesn’t grab them first. I subscribe to the paper, but with the time I save not getting up to read it, I can check out PerezHilton.com for celebrity gossip (an e-info meal should be balanced).
It’s an illness, this compulsion to keep up on everything. With the massive amount of information on the web, and the ease of consuming it, it can feel like it’s possible to stay comprehensively informed. But attempting this is a set-up for failure, and internet knowledge is fleeting anyway. I can’t tell you what I read yesterday—it’s already been replaced by what I read today, but with typically fuzzy details (Andy Dick did something crazy again; it may have involved urine).
I know I’m not alone in this affliction—I see friends and colleagues suffer as well, and I expect there will one day be a diagnosis specific to those who compulsively consume information. While (remarkably) there isn’t a Wikipedia entry yet, Google tells me the phrase “Internet Anxiety Disorder” exists, apparently coined last year by business/tech journalist Om Malik (who I wasn’t familiar with, but whose name I will drop at the first opportunity, to sound informed).
Malik—(see?)—predicted a negative effect of this desire to stay connected to everything: “Irritability, the inevitable desire to keep up with what’s happening—everywhere. The dreaded question: What did I miss? What’s happening in the world out there?” Sure, everything we could ever want to know is at our fingertips, but how can we be expected to have something insightful to say about the veracity of terror-threat claims and Andy Dick’s behavioural issues.
The job of staying informed infringes on free time too, as I increasingly multi-task my leisure. Anxiety aside, the internet does bring many wonderful things. For example, the TV show Lost, which I have taken to downloading and watching on my laptop while in the bathtub.
This issue of This is media-themed, so there is much in these pages about the internet. For those who use the web for little more than email, Richard Poplak offers an internet survival guide. Our cover story by Zoe Cormier covers a bigger-picture media issue, that of “Big Spin” and the use of PR to undermine the credibility of global-warming science and Kyoto. You may also notice this issue is heavier than usual—that is because it contains the winning entries from our 10th annual Great Canadian Literary Hunt. Congratulations to all the winners.
And, to those of you, who, like me, suffer from internet anxiety, my prescription for the information overload: Get lost in the bathtub, with This.
Jessica Johnston editor[at]thismagazine[dot]ca
