48 Opinion
Written by William Urbanski
OPINION
F
or many years, an integral part of my morning routine involved checking the various new sites in Korea, Canada, and internationally. In no particular order, I checked CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation), the Guardian, the Toronto Star and at least two different Korean news sites. Having been abroad for so many years, I felt that I had a personal responsibility to “keep informed” about what was going on around me in Asia, and checking the multiple news sites in Canada made me feel like I was maintaining a connection to home. But about eight months ago, when all the news agencies in the world collectively agreed that the only thing worth reporting about was the coronavirus, I quit my internet news habit cold turkey and in disgust. I mean, seriously, how many times can I hear about the same thing before losing interest in it completely? Somewhere among the myriad doom-and-gloom headlines and the 20-plus “URGENT”(!) corona-related emergency notifications I was receiving on my phone, it was clear that old Willy Boy needed to make a conscious effort to tune out this monsoon of media. This was not about reducing my exposure to “fake news” or anything like that, but it was definitely time to re-evaluate my relationship with the high-octane, up-to-the-minute, maximum-impact style of news that has unfortunately become the accepted norm.
www.gwangjunewsgic.com
October 2020
The Urge to Be Informed
There is all sorts of pressure to “stay informed,” which presumably means to follow developments that go on around the world. The question is: How much of this actually affects you? For example, is there really a point in knowing exactly what measures Timbuktu is taking to contain the spread of COVID-19 or how many people in Papua New Guinea cannot get masks? Here is another example that I only know about because a former teacher of mine has been posting about it on Facebook (a medium which, by the way, should not be anyone’s primary source of information about the world): The government of my home province of Ontario, Canada, decided that in September, schools and classes will open as normal with about 35 kids to a class. Naturally, teachers, students, and health professionals are up in arms about this and are all predicting catastrophe. As a grown-up who lives in Korea, all this does is make my blood boil, and for what? It does not affect me, and I do not actually give a hoot about the trials, tribulations, and woes of the education system in
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Ontario. Furthermore, having unevaluated information about why school teachers are cryin’ the blues does not mean I am actually informed about the issue.
Mugabe in the Mornings
Do you know who Robert Mugabe was? He was the president of Zimbabwe and was basically the worst person ever. My brother told me about how he developed a bit of a morning routine of browsing the news sites to catch up on Mugabe’s wild and unfortunate antics. This so-called “Mugabe in the Mornings” habit clearly exemplifies how knowing about something so removed from our daily reality can end up having basically nothing but comedic value. Furthermore, while knowing how much money some far-away bureaucrat stole may make us seethe with righteous indignation, it basically serves no purpose.
Doomscrolling
“Doomscrolling” is the sweet new word to describe the tendency to keep reading and clicking on internet articles even though they contain nothing but bad or worrying news. The way it works could be best illustrated through an imaginary, but I feel accurate, monologue by a man we shall call Johnny McJohnson. The scene takes place in the morning while Johnny is checking the news headlines on his phone and drinking a coffee: “What do we have here? Looks like corona cases went up. Hmmm, there’s a link below this article. Oh my! It says Trump pulled funding for scientific research to companies with links to China! A-ha! Wait a minute, there’s another link. It says that China is responsible for all this! I’m outraged! 2020 is the worst year ever!”
9/23/2020 11:05:42 AM
