I think I’m getting tired of the internet

Plus: rules of journalism, a 1,001st follower giveaway, and more

Good morning! It’s Wednesday, and here are this week’s five items for you.

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1. A take I haven’t written elsewhere

I think I’m getting tired of the internet

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I think I’m getting tired of the internet. Or, at the very least, the internet as we know it: the social internet, the endless updates internet, the little bit of everything all of the time internet, the knowing little posts internet, the showing you read the right things internet, the same damn headlines since 2015 internet, the Twitter and Reddit and NYTimes dot com and, yes, sometimes even the Substack internet—which is not to say I want a new internet, because that sounds very tiresome, too.

You know what I mean?

It’s not that I don’t like the internet. Obviously I love the internet. I wouldn’t have my life without the internet. My husband and I first got to know each other via the internet. (Not online dating; adjust your timeline. I’m talking about Gchat, which I guess was never actually called Gchat??) The internet is my job—has been all my non-service jobs, with the only partial exception of writing my two books, the latter of which involved a lot of internet and was, significantly, about the internet.

And it’s not that I’m tired of reading things, or even reading things specifically on the internet. I still routinely find things online that inform, surprise, and delight me. (Go look up Saint George of dragon-fighting lore on Wikipedia—it’s quite a rabbit trail. Oh, or the Chinchorro mummies. Whole new-to-me strain of mummies! Gruesome, fascinating, strangely egalitarian. Not as good as bog bodies, though.)

But the internet overall … tiresome is the word that keeps coming to mind. And all the new things that are ostensibly going to make the internet exciting again—generative AI, the metaverse, those stupid expensive face computers that have dropped out of the discourse with blessed rapidity—all of that seems so much worse. More tiresome. All the current problems, plus new and more tedious ones too. Pretty sure it’s time for the internet guys to fess up: They’ve reached some sort of dead end.

How do you live in a world like this?

Some of this is just election season talking. We’ve got another five months to get through, and that’s not counting whatever nonsense is in store in the interregnum period or the real possibility we’ll be doing a barely different version of this same over-flogged drama come 2028. (I originally wrote “come 2024” and am crushed to recall we’re already doing that one.)

And maybe some of it is just age. I can’t tell; I’ve never been this old before. But even though I see some approximate peers—most notably

Charlie Warzel

, now of The Atlantic, who appear to be of a similar mind—I’m not sold on that as a complete explanation. There are many people older than me who still seem to find the internet highly diverting, if I may infer so much from the verve and frequency of their posts.

Maybe some of it is—and I assure you I find this plaint trite even as I’m typing it—the algorithms. You know how kids like to walk around and around in circular above-ground pools until they get a whirlpool going? And it’s an 11-year-old-powered whirlpool, so it’s not like it’s inescapable, but going against the current is certainly a chore. Trying to find something both new and good on the internet feels like that anymore. It’s a big place, sure, but from anyone’s algorithm-situated vantage point, it seems like most of the new stuff is bad and the good stuff old.

Some (very smart, very skillful!) columnists have been writing the same piece to the same people for a dozen+ years now. I don’t think I can read it again. (Incidentally, this is one of my great worries as a writer. We all have wheelhouses, and so we should. It’s good to build expertise. But if I reach that point of repetition and don’t seem to know it, please tell me.)

Perhaps the only social network I still enjoy visiting is Instagram, which has my taste pigeonholed (and its algorithms tuned accordingly) just as much as any other platform. But, crucially, it has a different sense of my taste. Twitter knows about my work and politics. Instagram knows I like cheap old houses, exorbitantly expensive interior design, vintage clothing, handicrafts, fine pottery, guinea pigs, running, deep core exercises for postpartum recovery, and so on. It still confines me to a custom world of my own making, but it’s not the same custom world. I am a different person there, and I slip out of the current with slightly greater ease.

I can anticipate the standard rejoinder here: If you’re tired of what your algorithms are serving up, retrain them! Get out of your ideological box! Diversify 👏 your 👏 newsfeed 👏 !

Yes, yes, none of that is bad. It might even be good. But, well, it does sound awfully tiresome. Anyway,

The eye never has enough of seeing,
    nor the ear its fill of hearing.
What has been will be again,
    what has been done will be done again;
    there is nothing new under the sun.
Is there anything of which one can say,
    “Look! This is something new”?
It was here already, long ago;
    it was here before our time.
No one remembers the former generations,
    and even those yet to come
will not be remembered
    by those who follow them.

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2. What I'm reading this week

Jesus and the Disinherited, by Howard Thurman. Starting tonight! Technically homework for the fellowship I’m doing with

Michael Wear

’s Center for Christianity and Public Life, but I’m kind of surprised to realize I never read this in seminary. There was one class in particular where I need to go check my files, as it would’ve been an obvious pick, to the point that I’m wondering if the lack is in my memory, not the syllabus.

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3. A recommendation

PBS journalist Jim Lehrer’s 16 rules of journalism as a good rubric by which to assess new-to-you media outlets and writers. A selection:

• Cover, write, and present every story with the care I would want if the story were about me.

• Assume there is at least one other side or version to every story.

• Assume the viewer is as smart and caring and good a person as I am.

• Assume the same about all people on whom I report.

• Assume everyone is innocent until proven guilty.

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4. Recent work

• Kids aren’t cheap. That doesn’t fully explain why we’re ambivalent about having them. | Christianity Today (unlocked link)

• Aimless escalation | Defense Priorities (newsletter)

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5. Miscellaneous

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Dear readers, as of this writing I have accumulated 933 subscribers to this newsletter, which is tantalizingly close to 1,001, which is the point at which Substack puts that very flattering “Over 1,000 subscribers” notation on your landing page, which I am not too proud to admit I do, in fact, desire.

To that end: Please share this newsletter with your friends, family, colleagues, etc. if you find it worthwhile! Casual readers, please subscribe.

When the list tops 1,000, I’ll select one subscriber at random to receive their choice of a comped paid subscription for one year or a signed copy of Untrustworthy.

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