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My Glorious Echo Chamber
By Hunter Wade | January 30, 2023
“Good news is rare these days, and every glittering ounce of it should be cherished and hoarded and worshiped and fondled like a priceless diamond.“
-Hunter Thompson
Every morning as I step onto the exercise bike, I scroll through morning brew. I like its simple, organized, and short news format to catch the headlines of the day and to see if any stories catch my interest. Once I return home from the weight room, I throw on a podcast either BBC Sounds or Democracy Now! as I make breakfast.
Both shows are very liberal of course but also very entertaining as they focus on 2 or 3 stories, and have guests and experts familiar with the topic. Once breakfast is ready, I sit down and open up youtube on the boob tube, and float to either Channel 5 news or Phillop DeFranco.
I implore you to check out Channel 5 , journalist Andrew Callaghan will go to Trump rallies, Biker rallies, and flat earth conventions and let the people who love the camera’s attention make a fool of themselves. It’s great journalism, because it lets the viewer draw his own conclusions, and doesn’t feel like it has an agenda. Hunter Thompson, the gonzo journalist, would be proud.
On Mondays, I’ll watch LastWeekTonight with John Oliver on HBO, who is very funny and smart, almost always focusing on one story and always ending the story with a call to action or a positive spin on what the viewer can do to help.
Unlike my zoomers friends, I have fled Instagram, snapchat, twitter, and god awful Facebook. Instead I try to read longer articles online and avoid the short bursts of entertainment all too prevalent on social media. A website with links to long and abundant articles is Arts & Letters Daily (updated daily 🙂 ).
The app Raindrop.io keeps all my bookmarks organized, and categorized (unfortunately this blog isn’t sponsored by raindrop).
Besides grinding the stone of homework or forwarding my neglected writing project of rewriting the Great Gatsby (started last year on chapter 3), I find myself hooked to Ian Shaprio. No, not Ben Shaprio (guy is utter trash), Ian is a professor from Yale who focuses on Power and Politics in Today’s World. He uploaded a semester of his class and out of 20 lessons, an hour long, I’m on 12.
Am I living in an echo chamber of my own world views, and every day like smelling my own farts, I find pleasure in being rewarded by hearing my own beliefs being reestablished? Well maybe, BUT by avoiding social media at all costs, like a pirate avoiding the plank, I want to cast a wide net on the internet (no pun intended).
We live in an era of watching the public turn against the news, for they do lie and push their own agenda, they want your money for ads and you to stay angry for repeated viewership. But we have the internet now, and if you are just staying in your echo chamber tribe (unfortunately like my fox conned parents). You are missing the true glory of the internet: the wide range of opinions and information.
PS: The Onion (For opening my younger eyes to news and politics)
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