This right here is one of the problems that the democratization of publishing that Web 2.0 brought us combined with viral capitalism:

Because nothing in the USian life cycle can be other than a Career Move or Prelude to a Career Move, nothing folks do on the web is ever Just Personal. It is only ever regarded as Professional Opining from the commentariat.

BUT IT ISN'T.

I can write all I want on the bird machine about Rudy. Or not. I can make a marshmallow representation of him in court with chocolate syrup running the sides of the marshmallow and not one iota of democracy will be harmed, because I'm not running democracy.

My note to His honorable gasbagginess Ron Johnson isn't going to move that dial. Me making an impassioned please to take this all v. v. seriously isn't going to move the dial.

The people who can move the dial, who are load bearing portions of this moment aren't building marshmallow models of Rudy. They're taking him very seriously and returning volleys when they need to. My knowing that this is an unprecedented danger doesn't grant me control.

We have to stop believing that everyone needs to start clapping to save the fairies or it'll never happen. We need to stay aware. But ticker tape engrossment with the process is literally why this year is excruciating. We're living it as though it were an opera covered by ESPN.

We spend 3 months talking about what the event is going to be and why it's important and then 360° opinions from everyone who might be involved and two folks in a diner in Waukon, then do it again every time there is an iota of new info.

Because that might change the telemetry... until the event when we report out 500 words about every segment of the event. Then we do it post event. Then about the reactions to the post event.

And we stay emotionally over-reactive to each segment because the Event itself is very important.

It's bad for us.

Really.
Our brains aren't made to consume the information like that.

I would reckon that if we could do a controlled study that it would find that living life in this sort of rolling loop and over-activated emotional state is sticking us an a repeating trauma loop.

Election week begins to feel endless because you are reading 2500 people reacting to every iota of news in real time, pounding your prefrontal cortex into oblivion with a coupe of thousand ball-peen hammers

Folks shouting at us that we need to be doing our jobs more seriously at the same time is just bananapants. I'm a character actor / officer manager. Writing inane, over-long threads on the bird machine is just a hobby.