Last week I mentioned that it felt like social media, including Mastodon, was sapping my energy a bit. While I find Mastodon to be a friendlier experience than many of the others like X/Twitter, BlueSky, Threads, etc., I felt like there was a little too much that was slipping by my curated filters. I thought I’d step away from the platform for a little while and see how I felt without the interactions.
It’s been 72 or so hours and I’m finding it’s not Mastodon that’s sapping my energy, it’s the world in general. The answer to the Mastodon experience isn’t to step away, it’s to implement a few more filters to calm the chaos that occasionally creeps into the dialogues.
Apple has apparently noticed that I haven’t been on their Apple News+ app in quite a while and has randomly started sending me emails with headlines I have little interest in. This started about a week ago. I put a filter on that as well. And as a quick aside, I still don’t know what Apple is trying to do with News+, because the entire experience is nothing like the “fit and finish” of anything Apple strives for with most of their products. Apple News+ is laden with ads and feels like there’s duct tape and crayons holding the whole thing together.
Curation, not exclusion, is the key.
