Landslide; a ghost story

<p><a href="https://www.wrecka.ge/landslide-a-ghost-story">Erin Kissane</a>:</p> <blockquote> <p>There is a lot—like a lot a lot—of research suggesting that using social media to keep up with news does not actually inform us but does makes us feel more informed. Many studies of many populations have found for knowledge about what’s happening to us, social media essentially magnifies the Dunning-Kruger effect. When we talk about brainrot, we’re not wrong.</p> </blockquote> <p>This mirrors how I’ve felt for a long while. Mostly, guilty about taking a big step back from reading or listening to the news. It’s too difficult. And the more I read, the less informed, the less connected to the world, I feel. Reading the news in 2026 feels like connecting to a hive mind of 8 billion people screaming in every direction. I want to be a part of it, I want to contribute, but I feel weak under its influence. It almost feels like knowing the world in this way doesn’t feel useful or practical or even possible, emotionally. Thankfully the data backs me up but it doesn’t feel great, huh.</p> <p>Erin also writes:</p> <blockquote> <p>Real belief in collective knowledge may also suggest that caring for our own knowledge formation in social systems is a way of caring for the system as a whole. Necessary, if not sufficient.</p> </blockquote> <p>I like this. Caring for my dinky garden blog is how I show care for the overwhelming, unknowable, impossible mass that is all human knowledge.</p> <p>If I can be a steward over here, you can be a steward over there…</p>