I’m in the midst of a media cleanse. This started before the election when I canceled my Washington Post subscription. Jeff Bezos can do whatever he wants with the Washington Post, and he’s 100% correct that I don’t trust large media organizations.

After the election, I removed all news sources from Feedly except the Atlantic because I find their writing informative and compelling.

A friend calls this turtling. Pulling your head inside your shell and hiding. It’s quite comfortable here. With most of my free time, I’m leveling a dragon Holy Priest in World of Warcraft. #ama

Next on the list is Twitter. Since it was sold and turned private, my engagement has been significantly lower, and my follower count has shrunk as the humans have moved off the platform, but quite soon, I’m deleting my account. My finger has been over the DELETE button for a few days, and I’ve wondered why. Two facts: First, there are thousands of folks with whom I share stuff there. I can see they are there via much reduced but real engagement. Second, I have just under 20k tweets since 2007 that, upon review, tell an interesting story… at least to me.

I’ve downloaded the complete archive, and I’m sad to say I’m about to create a bunch of 404 errors when my corpus of tweets vanishes from Twitter. Why? This is my content, and I don’t want whatever Twitter has become to benefit from its existence. I’ll share the archive here at some point, but for now, I’m cleansing.

Like FaceBook before it, Twitter turned into something else. They both, early on, felt like a means of connection. Unfortunately, building that social graph allowed these businesses to target you and your engaging, clickable content expertly. What was a means of connection turned into hot, juicy, bite-sized content. Over the past two decades, this practice has made us intellectually lazy because these media services are paid not on the quality but the quantity of service. More clicks, more engagement. Truth and facts. Optional.

And what was a clever means of connection turned into a raging stream of clickable things.

So, bye, Twitter. I’m late to the funeral, but better late than never. It was fun before it got terrifying.

While I am profoundly turtling and have little desire to see a path forward, I have two related observations:

First, the lack of healthy debate on most social media is one of the core issues with the platform. Humans must disagree, but these platforms do not provide a proper bi-directional medium (or set of tools) for these debates. It’s liking, then not liking, then yelling, then ALL CAPS, and NOW I’M UNFOLLOWING YOU and YES BLOCKING BYE.

Debate is a tricky act between two humans who can both speak, listen, understand, and possibly evolve. Two humans. Often, there will be more, but let’s keep it simple and assume it’s two. Both humans are required to do this, and in the primarily anonymous world of social media, it’s normal not to consider the other human a human. They are the last thing they wrote that you disagree with. There is no relationship; it’s simply the last thing they posted. And how do you feel about that post.

The stakes are higher in person. You have to stare at that human in the eye, especially after they say something you don’t like. So, what do you do? You can’t yell, you can’t ignore them, and you certainly can’t block them, so what is your move? Mine: seek understanding. Put on that empathy hat and try to understand why they’re saying what they’re saying. That’s the first step. There are many more — read the book.

The continual failure to do this in social media results in a growing echo chamber where the humans agree, and those who disagree are quickly voted off the island. Some of these echo chambers are low stakes. Think about your favorite sports team. Those fans are aligned on what’s important. Who needs debate? The only debate we care about is what $OTHER-TEAM we hate the most. Go $OUR-TEAM.

There are higher-stakes echo chambers, too. Use your imagination here.

Second, it’s not a short or medium-turn fix to what ails us, but I am curious about investing in local and independent news organizations. Large media organizations have to compete with social. They desperately need those clicks, and that means mimicking the patterns they see in social. The headline must engage in one second or less, or it will be forgotten. It’s an economy of attention, not understanding or truth.

Local media has taken it on the chin for decades because social media consumes advertising dollars. Local media has withered without that support, with remaining big media sources bending to social media engagement patterns. The idea of investing in local media news organizations is because they report on the events that happen in my neighborhood. This makes them more human to me. They have skin in the game because, like me, they live here. My problems are their problems, which means we have a solid foundation to start to understand.

How do I go about this investment? Where do I start?

I don’t know. I’m turtling. For now.

Hi. I’m stressed, too. Here are random thoughts on this from the beginning of November 5th, 2024 — election day:

• Today, a convicted felon and failed businessman (six bankruptcies!) slash narcissist slash twice impeached politician who does not believe in democracy, who called for and achieved an armed insurrection, and who lies compulsively is the Republican nominee for the President of the United States.
• While the presidency is at stake today, winning the presidency is only part of what is decided tomorrow. There are countless House and State elections, State Supreme Court, and other Statewide offices on the line tomorrow, which leads me to a strangely comforting thought…
• There’s no scenario when it’s “over” later today. Whoever wins will face a passionate, well-funded, and motivated opposition who will spend the next four years attempting to win back what they lost.

Hmmm. This is just stressing me out more. Let’s try something different.

That’s Curious

If you ride a Waymo, they’ll flip you off.

Waymo is an autonomous vehicle available in San Francisco. No driver. All robots. I’ve taken ten rides so far, and it’s a coin flip if someone gives me the finger. There’s the folks on the street. Other drivers. Really, anyone might flip you off.

That’s curious.

With no judgment and pure curiosity, I suspect the reasons for the middle finger might include the following:

• Anger with a service that will make a bunch of jobs irrelevant.
• Abstract anger with the general idea of artificial intelligence and what it might present to the human race.
• Fear. Pure fear of the unknown. We, as a species, have an impressive history of doing incredibly stupid shit because we’re scared.

Fear is natural. It’s equal parts rationality and irrationality. Shoved together instantly when you are quickly presented with a suddenly unfamiliar situation. It’s your brain flipping the high alert switch because you don’t know what to expect next, and the stakes appear high.

So you react. Fight or flight.

And then you flip off the robot car.

Cool.

There’s another emotion you can experience in a car, and that’s road rage. This is the moment you’re behind the wheel, and another driver cuts you off. In a second, you go from calmly driving down the highway to a vicious, rageful human bent on the destruction of this other.

In an instant.

That’s curious.

With no judgment and pure curiosity, I suspect the reasons for the rage might include the following:

• Surprise, your calm drive to work was suddenly interrupted.
• Anger at this anonymous whoever interrupted your calm drive to work and threatened your safety.
• Finally, and full disclosure on this one, I did research here; you’re probably male and either already stressed about something else and/or have higher levels of impulsiveness and aggression on the road.

Understanding that, as a human being, you can have these real and immediate visceral reactions is essential because these reactions are being exploited daily¹.

On Curiosity

I mostly ignored the mid-terms. I ignored it because most of the content generated that cycle wasn’t news; it was carefully constructed incendiary entertainment posing as news designed to get me to flip off someone. It was not designed to inform but to get me to react. Quickly and emotionally. No reason. Fight or flight. I chose flight.

This political season, I’ve been all in. Since last November, I have completed one small act each day. This can be a donation, or this can be an action like writing and editing this piece. At the outset, I had a blank slate regarding what I knew. I spent a lot of time understanding how political payment processing works. I built a remedial understanding of the critical issues in each swing state and read about the intricacies of voter suppression. Curiosity is a feedback loop. The more I learn, the more I can inform and target my actions. It’s delicious. Information is empowering.

And calming.

Elections have been gamified. The stories from major media outlets are designed to get you to engage and not to think. In fact, they’d much prefer if you forwarded that link with that clever headline to all your friends… who cares if you read it? We need the clicks. We need that sweet advertising revenue.

Campaigns run the same playbook, but they don’t need your clicks; they need your money, and that means they must convince you, scare you, and motivate you with an artisanally crafted crisis tailored to get you not to think but to flip off the robot car and then donate as frequently as possible.

The Big Lie

The only vaccination I know to the incessant barrage of memes, rage, and compelling lies is education. One of my daily acts has been educating myself. When someone makes a bold claim on the news or social media, I take the time to understand what they are saying and the history behind it. Many of these research adventures have led me to the darkest chapters of United States history, where I’ve learned that this group of oppositional humans has always existed. Its election deniers in 2024; in 1865, after losing the Civil War, unrepentant Confederates were sent to Washington as senators and representatives.

Congress refused to seat them and drafted part of the 14th Amendment “to perpetuate, as a constitutional imperative, that any who violate their oath to the Constitution are to be barred from public office.”

I didn’t know that. Now I do. We both do.

The biggest lie they propagate is devious and deflating. It’s the idea, the feeling, that there are many — more of them than you. They do this by being loud and outrageous, minimizing those they consider less. They want you to think they are legion because they know they are less. There are more of us than them. Not Democrats or Republics, but decent, kind, and thoughtful humans. I’m talking about people who want the best for others and are willing to do the work to help each other.

So, today. Vote, then stop watching the feeds. Turn off the TV, which is more entertainment than news. Don’t worry. The results will find their way to you. I guarantee it. While it does, take time to teach yourself something. Go deep. Call someone you know is stressed and ask them how they are doing. They’ll laugh nervously. That laughter, that’s stress transforming into relief. You helped. Briefly. Call another person? Sure. Do 15 minutes of your favorite exercise. Even better. Your brain does its best work when it’s working out; today, you need your best work. Tomorrow, too.

There’s no scenario when it’s “over” later today. Whoever wins will face a passionate, well-funded, and motivated opposition who will spend the next four years attempting to win back what they lost.

But there are more of us than them.

Now breathe.

Good, me too.

Over on the Rands Leaders Slack, we are almost thirty-four thousand. Fun fact: in the 2020 Presidential Election, three battleground states, Arizona, Georgia, and Wisconsin, the margin of victory was less than 30,000. In Georgia, President Biden won by just over 12,000 votes.

It makes you think.

It’s an, uh, interesting time in United States politics. If you happen to live in the United States, I enthusiastically encourage you to firm up your voting plan. Check your registration, figure out how and when you’ll vote, do your research, be a leader, and show them how it’s done.

https://www.vote.org/ can help with all of this. Click on that link. Thanks.

If you’d like to take more daily action, join the Rands Leadership Slack, send me a DM that you’ve got a voting plan, and I’ll explain how you can get your hands on a couple of Rands stickers.

Happy democracy.