No Bad News

Years ago after watching Bowling For Columbine I decided to stop watching the news. During a scene where they went to where the L.A Riots started and you saw how much of a regular ass street it was I thought “How much news do I watch?” This was in 2002 before the internet was useful. I did not own a computer and did not talk about the news much with people unless it was something sensational that everyone was talking about. I was working in a porn shop and had been for a few years. My brother had passed away the year prior. I was single again after a four year relationship. My apartment was still new to me. Things were weird.

I sat and thought about the news that I was watching. Mostly Fox 11 back before Fox was FOX. What a weird word fox is. I would wake up and watch an hour and a half of news. When I got home it would be on in the background and it was what I would watch late at night. I calculated that I was watching at minimum three hours of news a day which was about 21 hours a week. That is almost a damned day worth of badness. Not all of it was badness. A lot of it was just nonsense. Stories about dogs that could yo-yo. Girls who could not stop hiccuping. How good chocolate was for you around Valentine's Day. But as the war in Iraq and wherever else we felt like getting oil and shit from continued the news changed and along with it the way people behaved.

When you watch the new now you will notice that a lot of it comes from independent sources. Footage is from cell phones. Stories come from TMZ or Twitter. There is no reporter investigating anything, just reporting it so when the shit hits the fan the talking head is not held responsible for what was said. “I'm just reading what is written.”

One of the main reasons I stopped watching the news was because it made me feel bad and I didn't know it. I grew up watching the news and being given a daily dose of “poison” and built somewhat of an immunity to it. I was just used to hearing about car crashes that did not concern me, floods in places I'll never go, and cities being blown up that I'd never heard of in countries I didn't know existed. It was normal. Then you realize that it is not. I see people post and write about terrible disasters with a frowny face or about some asshole with an angry smilie face. Other people chime in and it becomes this terrible echo chamber of anger, sadness, and disappointment. That echo chamber is dangerous because it does not lead to anything. We live in a weird time where people dogpile the latest source of anger and they are guilty until proven ostracized.

Whenever my mother calls and asks me if I saw the latest bad news I say “No. I'm writing.” I look outside and while there may be a tweaker outside shouting at the trashcan and it is a little bit too windy for my liking I am fine. Yeah, we have a joke of a president and everyone is looking for a reason to be upset which makes me want to be around less and less people. But overall I am okay-ish. Yeah, I get down, but I try to work through it. I try. I don't always succeed which is what good friends are for. But knowing the latest death toll around the globe is not going to make me feel better or improve my day. Talking to a friend that is feeling down and making them laugh will.