Why We Were Never Meant to Consume News Like This

The news cycle is getting more and more chaotic with content strewn about with the same care we assign to an overflowing dustbin. The first indication that arrested my attention was back when HuffPost was Huffington Post, and Black writers were populating the blog for Black Voices.

When voracious editors invited me to be “a blogger” after my essay about the missing school girls became a viral sensation on Medium, there was the excitement and validity that energized the desire to be aligned with a platform, that was both popular and well-respected.

“Exposure” was the currency that deceivingly propelled most of my decisions, and this time it just felt right. But once registration was done and the “publish” button was clicked, the euphoria evaporated when I switched to the homepage, and gasped at the load of rubbish that distorted my view.

Perhaps the personal investment forced a closer examination of how we were internalizing news items, and my summation was damningly sobering.

As I scrolled though the plethora of verticals, it quickly occurred to me that I had signed on to be a dumpster truck. Bloggers were systemically dumping shit upon shit on existing shit, until all that shit reads like the jumbled brain cells of those robots in Westworld, that are lined up for much-needed tune…