Sunday, July 27, 2003
(10:10 AM) | Adam Kotsko:
My crippling Internet addiction
Last night, as I was catching up on my subscriptions to Harper's and The New Yorker, I had an epiphany: there are better things to spend my time doing than reading Andrew Sullivan. So, although his web address is easy to remember, I have taken him off my bookmarks and off the "recommended links" to the left. That's one less easy target for me, but as I've shown before, I don't really require an "actual conservative" to comment on -- I'm more than happy to create a straw man and set to work on that. In addition, although everyone enjoys a circle-jerk, I'm starting to think that the liberal blogs are a little too hysterical for my taste. I happen to agree with the a priori judgment that everything George W. Bush does puts our nation on the verge of collapse into either anarchy or fascism, but I'm tired of the rather tedious Atrios contributors (which is not to say anything negative about Atrios himself) and especially Hesiod doing nothing but saying, "Well, here we go again..." every day. If they want to simplify liberal positions for easy consumption by morons (a technique first perfected by the right wing), then I'm all for it -- I just feel like I've caught on and need to move on to bigger and better things.
As far as highlighting the most interesting stories of the day, I think one could do far worse than Cursor. For satire, particularly of Andrew Sullivan, Neal Pollack turns out to be even better than the real thing. And as far as producing some creative, nuanced commentary based on actual inside information (i.e., based on more than just being able to read the newspaper in the morning), Josh Marshall is unparalleled. As of right now, no matter how non-addicted to the Internet I become, I'll probably still read those three on close to a daily basis. In addition, I recommend that everyone subscribe to the Harper's Weekly Review.
There -- I've purged. My strategy for coping with my addiction is to limit the number of sites I visit and hope that those blinders will stay on so that I can feel like I don't have any content left and thus have to do something else. It's a daily struggle.
Robb has a good post below mine that you should read. I always feel guilty posting after someone else, because I feel like someone would read my post, become bored, then just give up on the whole thing.
