Noisy media want to be first. Delete them.

One blogger wrote that Michael Arrington of Techcrunch said “there’s little value in being “right” with a story if you can’t be “first””.

Arrington is a brilliant marketer and making lots of money. He is also consistently out in left-field when evaluating startups. I’ve unsubscribed from Techcrunch because of all the noise.

Mainstream media are also noisy, so you might as well shut them off. Some people watch an hour of news every day. Even a half hour a day is 180 hours, almost 5 weeks of full-time work. After years of watching all this, what difference does it make? It only made me depressed. To think of all the better things I could have done with that time…

I don’t need to hear about things that don’t affect me, or that I can’t affect. A coup in Thailand? An MP in the UK charged with breaking the law? Yet another softwood lumber accord that’s being disputed, or another cease-fire broken? Noise to me.

I’ll write more about this later, but locus of control and self-efficacy are important issues. The media make people feel less empowered and less able to change the world. They teach helplessness. To value constant data rather than correct information simply adds to that suffering.

Wanting to change the world, or merely being sane requires shutting off most media.