@JohnBrady Something that I wonder about from time to time (I'm sure many folks have already accounted for this) is why and when and how news--particularly political news--became all-consuming. Electoral politics and world events seem to have consumed the entire lives of many, many people. ("I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by politics", etc.) Someone once perfectly described Twitter as the app for news fandom. Were too many people on Twitter and became obsessed with the news? Why is detailed knowledge of and firm opinions about political events considered essential for an intelligent person? As you can tell, just a bunch of hunches and half-formed questions here. We seem so utterly out of balance.

@jabel 1982: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TheMcLaughlinGroup

Going by my own history, I'd attribute the change to (1) the cable news 'services' like CNN and Fox News, which introduced the all-day news cycle; (2) the internet, of course.
When I was growing up, my family's news consumption consisted of the paper New York Times, delivered daily; and an evening news TV program (Walter Cronkite or an imitator). The AM radio station that I listened to had a 5-minute news segment on the hour, which I would sometimes listen to. Regular radio and TV programming might be interrupted for really big stories (Kennedy shot, Nixon resigns...). In my 30s (the 1980s) I'd buy the Boston Globe every day and read most of it except for the sports section. For most of the day, once you'd read the paper there was no more news to be had. That was it, and I thought of myself as someone who wanted to be well-informed. If someone had suggested an all-day news station, I'd have wondered "How are they going to fill all that time?" Now we know.

@JohnBrady I recall a genuinely big story breaking just before or as I got to the garage for a tire change or some such. Cable news in the waiting room had no reliable information yet, but do you think that stopped them? Ha! Nonstop nothing. "Experts" brought on to say nothing. Never more vivid.

@JohnBrady But I guess the thing that bugs me is this: what compelled people to tune in? What changed them from "what will do they do to fill the time on a 24-hour news source?" to bingeing it and scrolling it and sharing it and screaming about it? Did they suddenly have more free time? Were there fewer things to capture their attention? Did the end of holy wars mean they needed something to fight about? (That last one is half-joke, half-serious.)

@JohnBrady the thing I really miss is local newspapers. When I was traveling, one of my favorite things was to sit down while eating breakfast and spend an hour reading the local newspaper. Very interesting.

@jabel I don't know what the draw is. But I think that at some point in the evolution of perpetual news, purveyors realized that outrage is addictive, thus profitable.

@jabel It has nothing to do with holy wars and everything to do with biology and technology. (Disclaimer: I have not even read everything in this conversion, I only saw this comment in the feed.) Just out a curiosity, have you ever read Neil Postman? He seems like someone you would particularly enjoy and appreciate. Particularly his Amusing Ourselves To Death is one of the most accessible and significant books on television as a medium of communication—and the whole McLuhan clan. Postman: “What is peculiar about such interpositions of media is that their role in directing what we will see or know is so rarely noticed. A person who reads a book or who watches television or who glances at his watch is not usually interested in how his mind is organized and controlled by these events, still less in what idea of the world is suggested by a book, television, or a watch.”

He may address the time question, but I don’t recall. There were predictions as early as the 40s or 50s that humans would only have to work 3-4 days a week because…technology. I think they’ve seen that those predictions were technically correct, it’s just that we don’t notice it. No one, for instance, says, “Well, since I can save 8 hours by driving to town via internal combustion instead of harnessing the horse and buggy, I can spend that extra time meditating or reading about stoicism.” The question of the 24-hr news cycle is not really one of philosophy or technology, per se, but more deeply epistemical, subconscious, subtle.

Postman again: “I fear that our philosophers have given us no guidance in this matter. Their warnings have customarily been directed against those consciously formulated ideologies that appeal to the worst tendencies in human nature. But what is happening in America is not the design of an articulated ideology. No Mein Kampf or Communist Manifesto announced its coming. It comes as the unintended consequence of a dramatic change in our modes of public conversation. But it is an ideology nonetheless, for it imposes a way of life, a set of relations among people and ideas, about which there has been no consensus, no discussion and no opposition. Only compliance. Public consciousness has not yet assimilated the point that technology is ideology. This, in spite of the fact that before our very eyes technology has altered every aspect of life in America during the past eighty years.”

That was his thought in… 1985!!!

@tinyroofnail I haven’t read Postman or McLuhan directly but I’ve read about their ideas for years. Thanks for the reminder.

What you and @JohnBrady mention about technology and addiction is most definitely true.

I’ll have to continue to think about what’s nagging at me here. Like I said, I don’t feel like I’ve hit on my question yet. But thank you all for helping me clarify it!

@jabel "Half joke, half serious." If I had written that, I'd have been well more than half serious. I think the fall of the Iron Curtain really discombobulated us. Our purpose had been opposing the Red Menace. With that gone, was life even worth living?

@jemostrom This is still a thing in Norway. Not as many as before, but still quite a few.

@tinyroofnail So much yes to this. I have to read it sometime.

@odd There are still paper newspapers here but they are getting thinner and thinner, all the "good stuff" is often online (I think ... I don't subscribe to any online newspapers)

@jabel I’m with you. For all the knowledge of the media of communication being the water — and, in this case, the bullshit and anger — that people unknowingly swim in, I feel perpetually nagged about this stuff. The excuses have gotten thinner and thinner