Stop Polluting Our Information Ocean
There’s Too Much Crap In These Waters and I Don’t Want to Make It Worse
There’s Too Much Crap In These Waters and I Don’t Want to Make It Worse
Information Overload
Do you sometimes feel like you are drowning in information? Do you sometimes resent media creators like me because of this? Even if you usually enjoy a person’s posts, podcasts or videos, do you sometimes wish they’d maybe produce less of them so that you could emerge from the Information Ocean for even a short breather?
I get it, I really do. In fact, feeling this way is one of the reasons I sometimes don’t want to write. Sometimes my brain is so far submerged in the murkiest regions of that information ocean that I can’t make sense of things. The last thing I want to do is write from that place of confusion and simply contribute to someone’s sense of overwhelm.
And yet here I am, trying to live up to my commitment to publish one blog post per week in 2023, pulling out hair from orifices I didn’t know existed before I turned 50, and all I can come up with is crap.
Total crap.
Am I supposed to share that with you? Would you accept if I was a friendly, smiling face extending out from your computer screen with a bowl in my hand and I said, “Here! Here, take this! It’s a bowl of steaming crap!”
If you answered yes, well … when I think about building an audience, I never imagine one full of people with poop fetishes. But, hey who am I to discriminate? Welcome aboard! After all, beggars can’t be choosers…
But NO! No, that’s just it. In all seriousness, I don’t have a need for attention for attention’s sake. I love days when I can just chill out in daytime pajamas, binging a TV show or losing myself so deeply in a good novel that no one even knows I’m here. I love that!
In addition, while I’d be happy if my blogs generated some revenue, I’m not writing them to make a million bucks. Maybe a million yen, however … neither may be worth much soon enough anyway. No, fuck the money, ultimately, I want to write and publish posts for one reason: I have something valuable to share.
What Do You Put Into The Information Ocean?
Back in the late spring of that transformational year of 2020, I was having a picnic next to a creek in the foothills of central Japan and, while watching a plastic bottle float by me, a metaphor popped into my head.
If all of the information produced forms an Information Ocean and this Information Ocean is polluted, that’s partly because people sitting next to creeks in the foothills are throwing in plastic bottles and other pollutants.
As a lifelong nature lover, I don’t want to throw plastic bottles into creeks; and as a lover of good writing, I don’t want to publish crap.
In other words, if the Information Ocean is truly polluted, what can we as individuals do to clean it up? Well, a small step is to stop being a part of the problem: don’t be a polluter.
What About the Mega Polluters?
Yes, yes, I believe it’s true — just as when it comes to air pollution where mega-corporations like Chevron, Saudi Aramco Gazprom AOA account for a heck of a lot more greenhouse gas emissions than everyday Joes and Janes do — when it comes to polluting the Information Ocean, mega-corporate media outlets are more responsible for the murky waters than individuals doing blogs, podcasts or videos are.
While I can get a stat to back up that first claim, the second one is harder to quantify. But really, think about it: Back in 2002–3, just about every major corporate media outlet in America promoted the march to the illegal war in Iraq, which was based on the polluted information that Iraq possessed WMDs, and look at the damage that did to the world, with untold thousands of Iraqis killed, a traumatized generation of US military vets and trillions of dollars wasted.
None of that happens without the uncritical stance most of the US corporate media took toward the Bush Administration. That’s just one example, one that I’d like to think most can agree supports my point. However, I will grant that this is a controversial topic which I’m only touching the very top of the surface on.
Regardless, it’s my strong opinion that if those in the Censorship-Industrial Complex truly want to crack down on what they call “MDM” (misinformation, disinformation and the creepily coined malinformation), rather than turning their algorithmic tendrils onto lowly bloggers like yours truly, they ought to start with press secretaries for presidents. corporate media babbling blowhards and so-called papers of record.
(Even though it shouldn’t have been a surprise, one of the many fascinating revelations for me from Oliver Stone’s 2021 documentary, JFK Revisited: Through the Looking Glass, was just how much the US government relied on the corporate media to stifle public inquiry into Kennedy’s assassination and sell the Warren Report.)
Questions for Content Creators to Consider
Having said all of that, I also believe that as we enter this fourth decade of life with the Internet, content creators should do some soul-searching about what we put into the world so that we don’t add to the problem.
During our journey as content creators, it’s a good idea to occasionally stop to check in with ourselves and ask the following questions:
Why am I blogging, doing a podcast or creating videos?
Is what I’m sharing serving others?
Am I just seeking attention?
Is it possible to contribute something that helps clean up the Information Ocean?
You see, while I sometimes struggle with nihilism, I don’t want that to spread into the motivation for my writing, I don’t want to hear myself justifying publishing junk by saying, “Well, the ‘big guys’ in corporate media keep polluting and they are the majority of the problem, so even I stop publishing crap it won’t stop the ocean from turning into a sea of manure.”
Maybe that’s true. Or, maybe, maybe I can find within me something to publish that acts like literary mycoremediation for the Information Ocean. Will it be this column? To quote one of my favorite bands, “Maybe so, maybe not.” Maybe you’ll let me know in the comments.
On that note, let’s finish by sharing that song, because while I believe in the power of words, the power of music to dissolve divisions seems to me to be on another level. Perhaps mycoremediation for our Information Ocean already exists, but music is the fungi, not words.
Thanks for reading! You can support me simply by sharing my stuff, by buying me a coffee, by linking to me on Twitter or Facebook by checking out my old blog, by listening to my podcast, The B&P Realm Podcast, or by reading my 2015 novel, “The Teacher and the Tree Man.” You can also find that book in full here, or broken down into four shorter books (book 1, book 2, book 3 and book 4) or you can listen to it for free.