{"id":5361,"date":"2011-01-23T09:14:52","date_gmt":"2011-01-23T09:14:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/scienceblogs.com\/principles\/2011\/01\/23\/de-clutter-the-internet\/"},"modified":"2011-01-23T09:14:52","modified_gmt":"2011-01-23T09:14:52","slug":"de-clutter-the-internet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/2011\/01\/23\/de-clutter-the-internet\/","title":{"rendered":"De-Clutter the Internet!"},"content":{"rendered":"

offers a suggestion<\/a> that I heartily endorse. He quotes James Joyner on the problem of feeling obliged to comment<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

I frequently see a headline or story somewhere, decide it’s not worth my time, and then get drawn into it hours later when I see conversations about it on Twitter or my blog feed reader. Sometimes, it’s just a function of “well, this must be important so let me say something.”<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

and counters with the obvious solution:<\/p>\n

\n

I have a solution: don’t do it! If it’s not something that you personally care much about, just skip it. I, for one, would actually enjoy the blogosphere more if fewer people repeated the same things over and over, and in particular I’d pay more attention to OTB if it had fewer posts. I can’t read 20 or 30 posts a day on a single blog, which means that I probably miss lots of good stuff that gets lost in the clutter.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Of course, like all simple and obvious advice (“Want to lose weight? Eat less and exercise.”) this is easier said than done. When everyone is talking about something, it’s really hard not to want to say something about it, even if it’s only “Shut up ShutupSHUTUP!!!” I’m in one of my intermittent attempts to be a Better Person, though, and I’m doing my best to avoid this trap (“I’m trying, Ringo. I’m trying real hard<\/em> to be the shepherd.”). I don’t always succeed, but I have managed to cut down my outrage-of-the-moment blogging quite a bit, which I think is probably a Good Thing on balance, even if it often leaves me feeling disconnected from the blogosphere.<\/p>\n

Like Kevin, I would love to see more people take up this cause. I’d love it if there were fewer functionally identical blog posts about whatever topic is currently stoking ire, and Twitter is even worse (just because you can<\/em> re-tweet 50 angry comments a day from people who share your views doesn’t mean you have to<\/em> re-tweet 50 angry comments a day).<\/p>\n

I don’t expect this to go anywhere, but like Kevin, I’ll throw it out there and hope for the best. The Internet, and the world in general, would be a better place if people only talked when they had something to say, and not because talking seemed like the thing to do.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"1","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5361","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5361","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5361"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5361\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5361"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5361"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5361"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}