Talia Jane and Why It's Best To Not Give a Damn About Talia Jane

Why are we talking about this Talia Jane's letter?

Isolating myself from Twitter has made me almost completely ignorant of this story.

Almost.

And that's a good thing.

I did see this somewhere on the internet, and then on The Five.

Are we this bored for entertainment disguised as "news"? 21-year-old whiny nobody whines about her lame job isn't a story.

This is a story that exists only because of the dumb side of Social Media (which is to say, virtually all of social media) and we should probably not take these stories seriously.

Yes, there's always an idiot in the world.

So what? Technology has made it possible for people to be foolish publicly, sometimes on a global scale. But so what if they do?

Why do we all need an opinion about it?

When did it become our duty to have an opinion on every idiot in the world?

When did "I don't know and I don't care" become somehow forbidden as an opinion?

I really have not acquainted myself with the facts of this case. I don't intend to. I might as well write a blog post about the neighbor down the block whose stoop isn't well swept.

Life is already well-filled with stupid pointless useless bullshit. Generally we avoid it, but when we see it on a computer screen, somehow we go rushing to it.

We're still adapting ourselves to this bizarre new world we live in. We need to recognize that we now have the capability of being annoyed or even outraged by literally a hundred non-stories in a day-- and this does not have anything to do with any change in the world, just a change in our technological capability of having annoyances and outrages delivered to us free of charge.

Part of the adaptation to this should be the development of a Not My Business/Not a Real Story I Need Concern Myself With Screen that strains trivia like this out of our mental ecosystems.

We need to develop some kind of mental armor against Dumb.

Otherwise, we're going to all go bananas.

Maybe we've already all gone bananas.

Maybe we all need to de-bananafy.

Open thread. I'm shutting down for the night. I'm surprised I made it this long. I think I'm going to fall asleep in the next hour.

Maybe use this to de-bananafy yourself, and talk about things that don't drive you crazy. Maybe a book you've read or plan on reading. Or your hobbies. Or maybe the mayor that's banging your wife. On second thought don't talk about that. That seems like it would be pretty upsetting. So, hobbies then. Unless your hobby is banging constituents' wives. Then, maybe just talk about a different hobby.

posted by Ace at 06:15 PM

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