Bailing

My best days are probably the ones where I never end up getting on the social networking websites. Focusing on my own affairs has the effect of leading to real productivity and also that of filtering out all the awful stuff that is on those websites. Sadly, such days are all too few and far between, as my level of discipline is lackluster at best. Most days I have those sites open on my computer all day, and I reach an apoplectic state numerous times.

There are countless ways in which I am angered. The most incident is a common thing with me. Someone who I like in general was wringing his hands over the list of the most popular articles at the New York Daily News. Most of them concerned the death of actor Paul Walker, and all of them were very yellow journalism. Given that the newspaper in question is a tabloid, I was unsurprised and unbothered. He was very bothered, as were others.

Even though I should have known better, I engaged with the thing. My point of view failed to get any traction, of course. I definitely knew better than to keep going with it, but I replied one more time. This didn't really get anywhere either, nor did the next thing I said. At this point I finally had the good sense to extract myself from the matter, since I still had things of my own to do that day and this would kill the whole rest of my day if I let it.

I didn't let it. You can "unfollow" a Facebook post, which is possibly the site's most valuable feature at present if you ask me. Activating it will keep you from being notified about each comment subsequent to your own, and I managed to forget about the matter until later, at which time my passions were no longer so inflamed that I could not keep my thoughts to myself. Someday I hope to not involve myself in such pointless exchanges at all, but for now I'm glad that I can get myself out before too much time is wasted.