Wednesday, July 3, 2013

White Noise

The internet is a wonderful thing.  However, there is part of me that gets nostalgic for the "quieter" times before the 24 hour news cycle; before the information overload that comes with literally everyone talking, or, as the case may be, screaming at once.  A case in point is the demise of the "Letter to the Editor."  Well, the letter to the editor hasn't really died, it has been replaced by the online "comments" section.  What has truly died is people taking the time to inform themselves on a subject and then organizing their thoughts into a rational statement or argument before committing them to print.

Writing a letter to a newspaper used to be a commitment.  It took time. It took thought. You also had to put your name on it. Sure the paper controlled whose letters got posted, and you had better chance of seeing your letter in print if your views coincided with those of the paper's, but the paper's editors would usually publish just enough from the opposing viewpoint to maintain the appearance of objectivity.  The best part was that the editor's were allowed, if only because of a limited number of column inches, to weed out the cranks, racists, lunatics and everyday morons who wrote to them and choose from the letters that actually might merit reading.  That, unfortunately, is lost to the ages.

These days, every major newspaper has an online version. There is a comments section for every article or story in every section of the paper. While the moderators do weed out the most offensive posts, their standards are at best arbitrary.  Free speech may be the backbone of American ideals of democracy and freedom, but it would seems that the thought that is supposed to go along with that right is in perilously short supply.  In fact, I would go so far as to say that there are a lot of folks out there who are simply...well...idiots.  You get some readers who take the time to digest an article, inform themselves on the subject and write rational, thought out responses to the issue at hand.  Unfortunately, you have to wade through 500 posts of the most inane drivel in order to find them.  It's mind-numbing.

I stopped watching television news because it has devolved into a cacophony of voices talking over one another without even the pretense of listening to what is being said.  I've stopped reading the comments sections of the newspapers for the same reason.  It's just white noise.