Browsing Quirks

Awhile back and for what are probably obvious reasons, I more or less completely gave up browsing news and social media. I would like to say that it was a calculated move made for productivity reasons, or that it was a logical and deliberate "this is not healthy for me" type of thing but it wasn't, it was more of physical response – more like an "obviously we don't touch the hot pan" type of thing. After several long nights of doom-scrolling and more than one work day derailed due to a "quick" check to see what's going on on Twitter I just stopped.

I will likely do a separate post on that whole process but here I want to write about a funny thing that I've noticed about how I move around the web now that there's that extra space and time to fill. First of all, I probably am more productive now that I'm not on Twitter and such, but not necessarily by a lot. Instead I've found new ways to be mindless. For example, I regularly find myself checking Slickdeals or Wirecutter for absolutely no reason at all. I'm not looking for anything, I'm not an impulse buyer, I haven't bought anything from either place in almost a year. Why do I do that?? My best guess is that I got in the habit of checking those sites back when I was looking for a replacement laptop for Black Friday and find it mildly interesting to see what's on sale. But still, it's a strange impulse, and always funny to me how our minds can steer us somewhere with hardly a conscious thought.

But more interesting are the other slightly more deliberate rabbit holes that I find myself going down. I read more newsletters and blogs now, and those are endlessly varied and interesting. I recently found myself on the New York Times Open blog (steered there by a newsletter), and spent several days reading almost every post. The Open blog is about how they operate within the Times. Recently they had a series highlighting individual team members, mostly in tech fields (product owners, developers, data scientists etc.) and I found that to be fascinating and engrossing. It seems like a really neat culture that they've built within NYT, and I was particularly struck by how honest, open, and funny their team is. Almost everyone talked about struggles they had getting into their field, uncertainty and insecurity that they still have and ways that they're trying to take care of themselves in this environment. I never tire of reading about real people: what their daily routines look like, what their quirky side-projects are, how they try to overcome obstacles. I also really appreciate it when companies are brave enough to work somewhat in the open. Along with team members they also post about how they are thinking about challenges like hiring and even what terms to use.

Along the same lines as the Open Blog I also recently went through more than a few blog entries for, of all things, customers of a keyboard manufacturer that I've purchased from. Again, it's a really odd thing to do, but I like reading about what people do and how they arrange their lives. I like reading about their pets and office set-ups and the captain's chair they use for their office.

I'm pretty sure I would never have found or bothered to read these stories without abandoning my previous frenetic feeds. I enjoy and I missed longer form writing. I've missed personal writing that's not always trying to make a quick and impassioned point. Or, even when it was good, I feel like the shorter format of social feeds or news headlines was affecting me somehow. I could feel myself becoming impatient with anything more than a couple of paragraphs.

Whether I got here on purpose or not, I like this new way of moving about the web. It feels more measured and deliberate. Sure, I can still be mindless, but it's my mindless algorithm that took me to wherever I find myself, and content isn't being endlessly scroll-dumped into my browser window. It's browsing in the way you might browse a bookstore or a quirky shop vs being screamed at and, as with the quirky shop, I'm more likely to find surprising gems.