No News is Good News
A Week Without Online News: Oct. 27th — Nov. 3rd, 2020
I’m a news junkie. After waking up, staggering into the kitchen for tea, and reacquainting myself with the couch, I poke my phone and scroll through several of my favourite news apps: CBC, The Guardian, Apple News and Fox News. I gravitate towards pieces on Canadian and American Politics, Climate Change, Music and (I’m loathe to admit it), Celebrities. This start-of-every-day routine provides me with a mixture of cozy comfort, a sense of connectedness to the happenings of the world, as well as intellectual stimulation and mindless entertainment.
Over the past eight months, COVID developments along with the White House Reality Show has had me glued to the news. I’ve tuned in daily to watch the latest twists in the twin sagas; infections spiking, Trump’s twisted response to the pandemic, Biden’s nomination, Trump’s tax returns, the debates, Trump’s COVID infection, plots to kidnap the Governor of Michigan, and so on, and so on. It has been an extraordinary time to live through and I’ve consumed it all through the interface of my smart phone, each morning, on the couch with my tea.
Stepping back from this circus of never-ending, up-to-the-minute coverage the week before the presidential election was the perfect challenge for me. I’m clearly addicted to my phone and what it feeds me. I’m barely in control of my fingers as they swipe, tap, and click, my eyes as they bounce from image to headline to text, and my brain as it sends hits of dopamine throughout my body, keeping the behaviour steady and my consumption of these products reliable.
In order to look critically at my behaviour and its effects, I conducted a week-long online news and advertisement audit, to see what I was looking at and how it made me feel. Next, I went on a week-long news fast, from October 27th to the night of the U.S. election. I replaced my daily news immersion with a half-hour of reading an actual book. I tracked all of the advertisements I was exposed to, a few of the news stories I read, the topics that came up in my book, and my thoughts and feelings along the way. The following is a day-by-day journal of my experience.
Wednesday October 21
I’m loving the feeling of vegging out while catching up on the newest news. It’s definitely hard to stop. I’m curious about the ads being targeted at me, especially the unspecified injection, but not curious enough to click on anything. Trump is campaigning like crazy in swing states with seemingly no concern for public safety, despite recently contracting COVID.
Total Ads: 22
Thursday October 22
I couldn’t believe the number of Green party ads (for the upcoming British Columbia election). I am already planning on voting for them, but was reminded that my mail-in ballot has still not arrived, and that I have to get to the polling station early to vote. I’m a big orange juice drinker, but I never buy Tropicana. Final US election debate is tonight.
Total Ads: 27
Friday October 23
I woke up late and opened my phone right away. Read about analysis of the final Trump-Biden debate and about the explosion of mail-in and advance voting numbers for both the B.C. election as the one about to happen in the U.S.
Total Ads: 10
Saturday October 24
This morning I read about Hunter Biden’s laptop and COVID numbers increasing in Ontario and Quebec. Really noticing the ads today; where they are placed, how they might be targeted at me, how many there are. Once this is over, I’m considering upgrading to premium (The Guardian) to go ‘ad free’.
Total Ads: 15
Sunday, October 25
Today I read in depth analysis of the BC election, and am pleased about the results. I’m finding that these ads really don’t seem targeted to me. Even though I’m paying much more attention to them by recording their nature and origin instead of skipping over them, I’m not feeling especially drawn to act on any of the messages.
Total Ads: 40
Monday, October 26
I looked at articles around the electoral college polls and a story about minor hockey abuse. After about twenty minutes of news surfing, I can’t really remember anything else too specific, enlightening, or heartwarming that I read. What did I read? Where did the time go? Despite this sense that I’ve wasted my time, I definitely want to keep going. Even as I’m aware of the manipulation going on, I’m pulled to scroll.
Total Ads: 31
Tuesday, October 27
Ads that stood out to me were about skiing, orange juice and a new car. I’m definitely looking forward to going skiing as the weather starts to turn. I do like drinking orange juice in the morning, it goes well with tea. We are looking at buying a new car in January. Trump is crazy, Biden’s not. What else did I read?
Total Ads: 28
I don’t think too deeply about the time I spend each morning surfing news. I’m not feeling drawn in by any of the ads, I feel smarter than that. I can’t actually believe that people do click and buy — they must, or else the ads wouldn’t be there. The news is interesting, and I like feeling abreast of local and international affairs.
Over the course of the week I do start to wonder about the impacts of spending my time this way. What are the physiological effects of screen addiction? Who am I becoming as I consume, or am consumed by these digital products?
Wednesday, October 28
This morning I wake up, head to the couch with my tea and delete Apple News, CBC, Fox News, and The Guardian apps from my phone. I decide that instead of surfing news apps in the morning, I will read Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer. I’m in a book club, and this is our current read. I haven’t had much time for it, so I’m just beginning.
The sensation of reading on the couch is akin to elation. I intend to take notes on my computer, but it is out of batteries and I know I don’t have a cord. This is a perfect turn of events. I feel calmer, and the content is so relevant to the project and meaningful for my life, it warms my entire being. The initial act of deleting apps and resisting the phone’s pull is hard. As soon as I start reading, the craving disappears.
Through the parable of picking wild strawberries, Kimmerer compares the consumer economy which bestows its citizens with rights to property, with the gift economy, which bestows responsibility and relationship to the land and people. Receiving this message this morning, in contrast to the messages I’ve been consuming is a stark contrast. The products being advertised to me are property I have the right to own. They have been, in Kimmerer’s words ‘wrenched from the earth’. They and I are devoid of relationship or responsibility.
Kimmerer asks: ‘How, in our modern world, can we find our way to understand the earth as a gift again, to make our relations with the world sacred again?’ She suggests, as a start: ‘Don’t buy it. Refusal to participate is a moral choice. Water is a gift for all, not meant to be bought and sold. Don’t buy it. When food has been wrenched from the earth, depleting the soil and poisoning our relatives in the name of higher yields, don’t buy it.’
The feeling of ‘not buying’ the news this morning is wonderful.
Thursday, October 29
Wake, tea, Braiding Sweetgrass. I’m reading this morning about the stories we tell ourselves, and about ceremony. How stories and traditions were lost and in times of need, replaced by homemade substitutions. I’m finding my yearning for better stories, for meaning, for ceremony in my life, and wanting this for our children. When they ask me to tell them a story, I often don’t know what to say, and wish I had a go-to parable that illuminated the values we need now. I know that I certainly am not going to find the stories I crave, with the values most important to me, from the news apps.
Friday, October 30
This morning I’m reading about two-eyed seeing; how Indigenous ways of knowing, paired with scientific approaches offers a more complete understanding of the world. For those who were raised in indigenous communities, trauma-laden, re-gathering identity and culture, this isn’t a choice. They are forced to live in these two worlds, knowing one in order to survive and the other to thrive.
For those who were raised in the other world, that one without the ability to listen to the natural world, it’s a choice. For me though, it’s a matter of thriving. If I’m not rejecting the consumer-driven reductionist version of our world, the one that chops it into bits for sale, I’m just not able to thrive. I feel the deep need for stillness in the woods. Even the possibility that I may know some element or animal more closely than I used to, drives me forward with purpose and delight.
Saturday, October 31 & Sunday November 1
This weekend I slept later but still maintained my couch — tea — book routine. The chapter ‘Learning the Grammar of Animacy’ filled my thoughts through the weekend. The main idea exposes the difference between English and many Indigenous languages; how one reinforces humans as superior to and separate from nature, the others underlining humans as a part of and in relation to the natural and living world. I want this to be a part of the story I tell. I want to shift my language to understand trees, creeks, and boulders as alive, with agency, people who are ‘being a maple, a torrent, a granite.’
I’m always correcting my students when they assign a gender (always male) to a fish, a centipede, a squirrel. I say “how do you know it’s a boy?”. This always stops them short, and slowly but surely helps them to relearn their language to be anti-sexist. I’ve dabbled in anti-colonial language regarding the natural world, but it isn’t easy, using English against itself. What can I say to re-orient my learners toward a new way of seeing?
Here’s a beginners list, with my attempts to replace ‘it’ with more personified pronouns and verbs:
- When looking at evidence (tracks, scratch marks, etc.): Instead of “What did this?” I could say, “Who did this?”
- When referring to a forest: Instead of “The leaves are falling,” I could say, “The trees are deciding to shed their leaves.”
- When referring to a mushroom: Instead of “It is growing,” I could say, “They have chosen today to poke their caps out from the earth!”
- When referring to a body of water: Instead of “Wow, look at it rushing,” I could say, “Wow, the creek is as excited as you today!”
Monday, November 2
I read about tapping maple trees this morning, something I’ve done a few times with my family and with my students. The chapter stated with the Anishnaabe story of maple trees that once flowed with sweet syrup, making human people lazy. Upon witnessing this, Creator poured water into the trees to dilute the syrup, teaching humans about possibility and responsibility. I realize how lazy my phone makes me sometimes. In contrast, reading works my brain and yet relaxes me, helping me to know the possibility and responsibility of each day.
Tuesday, November 3
Election day in the USA.
I imagine the news apps that I deleted as animate, calling to me to be redownloaded, lit up and scrolled through, fresh with the newest insanities to the south. And yet, I feel repulsed by the idea. Even the words ‘News Apps’ leave a bad taste in my mouth. All of the nasty goings on in swing states, at polling stations, in campaign offices across the US; all seem to me a spectacular mirage, far removed from my small slice of earth. My family, the students I teach, my human and more-than-human neighbours, these are the people whom I am responsible to, whom I should be most generous with.
Tonight, I will turn on the tv, and watch the results come in. For now though, no news is good news. I am alive to the real world; the one that lives in the relationships I foster with my family, my students, and the non-human people just outside my back door.
References:
Hocking, S. (2020). [Photograph & Screenshots].
Kimmerer, R.W. (2013). Braiding Sweetgrass. Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants. Milkweed Editions, Minneapolis MN.
Kuper, L. (2020). Stay Calm. New Yorker, Conde Nast, NY
Rose, D. (2011). [Picture of wild strawberries] [Photograph]. https://cabinorganic.com/tag/wildstrawberry-leaves/
