I think our psyche is extremely delicate, and pretending we can mentally manage and sort the influx of constant information is fooling ourselves. Fooling oursel

I think our psyche is extremely delicate, and pretending we can mentally manage and sort the influx of constant information is fooling ourselves. Fooling ourselves because by virtue of exposing yourself to so much information daily, you're altering the way you think and rewiring your mind. I'd like to think that I'm above being influenced by subliminal propaganda in media (especially television), but I'm not. I've caught myself a few times where I held a strong opinion about something I knew nothing about and I was able to trace it back to what originally influenced me. When pressed on certain opinions I couldn't say anything concrete. Life has been a lot better when I deleted all social media accounts (900+ 'friends' on FB). Really only about 20 of those connections I keep in touch with, and I've made it a point that texting is only for details not chatting. Since talking on the phone and making efforts to see people in real life I've been a lot happier. My world feels less overloaded, there are no strings connecting my life to social media and the control is back in my hands. I can feel how I want to feel about things without carefully summing up and absorbing how others feel about my experiences. Social media and texting and all that shit is just another and even more shaved off abstraction of human interaction (boiling down interaction to just characters on a screen). I draw the line at the human voice, nothing below that save for carefully thought out and written letters is 'human' enough for me to really derive any lasting pleasure from. It's depressing for a very long time after deleting social media accounts, it feels like your entire social rug has been suddenly swiped right out from underneath you. I didn't back any of it up or save any of it. And you know what? I don't remember any of it. I don't remember the conversations because there were 100's a day. I don't remember any of the comments or banter left on photos, or the photos themselves. It all blends into one. All of it was meaningless, I didn't grow closer to any of those people. I discovered more about them, sure. Omitting (or at least trying my hardest to) popular media and social media has been mentally freeing. I get to ask people 'Oh yeah? Why don't you tell me about it?' when they say 'Hey have you heard of <current event>?' I have no idea what's going on anywhere and I love it.