I didn’t make any New Year resolutions. Very bad.
So I will make a belated resolution. To spend less time reading rubbish on the internet. I wrote an article here: managing life with internet.
As an economist, I often read articles on economics at papers like the Guardian and Independent. In one sense they are free, but the cost is that your eyes often get drawn to reading the useless comments at the bottom of the articles. In the old days, these comments were more carefully thought about, selected and the best published as letters to the editor. – And I rarely read letters to the editor, because they weren’t very good anyway. So why have I spent time reading things that only give a mild sense of frustration?
I like this page – don’t read the comments. Three of my favourites.
“The problem with internet comments is that you can never really know who’s saying them.”
— Winston Churchill
“Nobody on their deathbed ever said, “I wish I had spent more time reading internet comments.”
“We like to think that we’re smarter than dolphins, but no dolphin has ever bothered to read online comments. Dolphins: 1, Humanity: 0”