by Peter Löcke //
"Have you heard the latest?" My old acquaintance was sitting outside a café enjoying his well-earned after-work beer. His voice almost cracked as he threw the question halfway across the pedestrian zone at me.
I definitely didn't know the latest news because I was at the end of my media diet. I need that from time to time when I'm on the verge of information burnout. stand. I constantly feel flooded with stimuli. That was already the case in pre-pandemic times and has only got worse since then. It may be my age. I was socialized in an analogue way. I found out what was happening in the world back then on the evening news, usually in the newspaper the next day. I was informed and yet relaxed. Those days are over now. I'm not an eternally outdated person and I certainly appreciate the technical advances of the internet age and use them to my advantage. And yet: life in the liveticker stresses me out. I find out all kinds of things in real time, including analysis of what has just happened. How something complex that has just happened can be analyzed never ceases to amaze me. I used to naively believe that knowledge requires distance. So be it. As I am overwhelmed by the flood of information, I have taken personal precautions. The TV is now just a dusty decoration in the living room, my smartphone is anything but smart because it doesn't have internet access. I don't read facebooks and I also avoid tweeting. However, my reduced media diet alone is not enough for my well-being, as I have discovered. Why? Like everyone, I have an email address that I check at least once a day on my laptop. And that's where the problems start. For more than a year and a half, there has been a pandemic live ticker on this site that has me terrified. What do the RKI, Drosten, Lauterbach, Spahn and the linked fact checkers say? What are the current incidence figures? Has the healthcare system already collapsed or will it collapse tomorrow? What new rules and government regulations are there? It doesn't stop there. To relax and take a break, I can turn my attention to the climate. Why does my ecological footprint seem to be getting bigger by the day, even though I'm living on a shoestring? Why do experts who walk around the world with square toes explain this to me? Are cows partly responsible for man-made climate change or are humans responsible for cow-induced climate change? Have cattle finally been taught how to go to the toilet and that they should wear an absorbent mask so that they emit less methane?
I don't have to click on it. I know. And yet I do. It's a lack of self-discipline, it's a fascination with the weird and the terrible. It's simply curiosity. It's also an addiction. After clicking on it, I regularly ask myself which idiot wrote the text and which even bigger idiots are reading it. After realizing that I myself am one of the idiots, I shut down my laptop. Depressed by all the terrible news and disappointed in myself for my lack of discipline. Then the only thing that helps is cold turkey, a complete media ascesis lasting several days. No important mail will have arrived. If need be, there's the letterbox. Mail in envelopes and on paper. Older people will remember.
I finally arrived at my friend's table. I had become curious after all. The addiction to information. What was the latest news? Have basic rights already been redefined? What is Mr. Nostradamus Lauterbach warning about? What does the Federal Cross of Merit recipient Drosten fear? Is influenza particularly dangerous this year or will it be completely eradicated by the corona measures like last year? I waited anxiously and my friend blurted it out.
"Helene Fischer is pregnant."
I don't know how long the awkward silence lasted. I was disappointed by the information and my friend was disappointed by my unenthusiastic reaction. I tried to salvage the situation, tried to shine with my half-knowledge. It may not be my favorite music, but I don't live on the moon either.
"Florian has actually sunk his Silbereisen. Congratulations to the parents-to-be."
There was no lady near us whose feelings I could hurt. My old friend shook his head in irritation.
"They haven't been together for a long time. You really are living on the moon."
So my half-knowledge turned out to be ignorance. Embarrassing for me. The waitress came to the table and asked if I wanted a drink. I declined. I didn't want to find out whether I had to leave on the count of three, two or one. I preferred to leave immediately. My old friend sang "Breathless" and I was speechless. Who was the father or was it even an immaculate conception? I won't know the latest until the evening. Then I'll go back to my laptop. I just want to check my emails.
Articles identified by name do not necessarily reflect the opinion of the publisher.
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6 Responses
Delicious Mr. Löcke, simply DELICIOUS!
Your moon is my private vintage car workshop, my media exile, so to speak. With a few musical interludes from the band TOOL, I can perfectly decouple myself from all the madness for hours or even days. In the end, there's still some added value on the table in the form of functional sheet metal.
Thank you and best regards!
Dirk Botschen
Delicious...a cup of coffee, a Löcke gloss and ,,blue valentine,,, in the background...life can be so beautiful.
Please keep up the good work!
Dear Mr. Löcke, THANK YOU.
Thank you, because I am not alone in my feelings of stress caused by sensory overload, especially from the media.
Danke, dass es noch andere Menschen gibt, die es vorziehen, ein bisschen „wie auf dem Mond“ zu leben.
Thank you for not only describing the whole thing in a pleasantly critical way, but also for conveying it with humor in your article.
I smiled and laughed at the end. My heart skipped a beat and I continued to look out of the window with a grin on my face ...
Life remains beautiful 😉
With this in mind ...
Best regards
Angelika Fleckenstein
Reading this article, I am pleased to see that other contemporaries also have a similar problem with digitalization and all its advantages and disadvantages. I, too, have an analogue socialization and am amazed every morning that I travel to work on public transport at the vast number of contemporaries who can no longer take their eyes off their own smartphones. As a book-reading outsider, I sometimes believe I am an endangered species. Unfortunately, I can't do without a smartphone in these times either, purely from a work perspective, but outside of work I am consciously analog, don't have a personal cell phone and won't be getting one. Unfortunately, some people are no longer able to do business without one, but I couldn't care less. The MSM have also lost their bonus for me in the meantime and yes, you can get by almost completely without television and newspapers. Incidentally, nobody needs this state propaganda. That's why I firmly believe that a more analog approach will also restore the thinking capacity of many people, especially young people, to a necessary level.
Well, even in the pre-digital age, of course, propaganda took place to a considerable extent, such as in Der Spiegel with its constant fear-mongering about a Soviet attack. The aim was to support political agendas and today it is apparently no different. The media back then was also controlled by the Atlantic Bridge, just as the careers of the political elite were decisively influenced by organizations such as the Bilderbergers. Just think of Helmut Schmidt, Otto Graf Lammsdorf or Helmut Kohl. But nobody noticed.
I see the flood of digital information in a positive light. If you choose according to the principle "If you lie once...", the range of serious sources of information suddenly becomes very manageable.
Tom Hoghkinson writes very aptly in his very readable book "Anleitung zum Müßiggang" (Instructions for Idleness) in 2004 that almost all media only want to drive us into fear and overexcitement and advises us to avoid television and newspapers. According to his biographer Hans Magnus Enzensberger, the former commander-in-chief of the Reichswehr von Hammerstein-Equord (1930-1933) only found lazy and intelligent soldiers suitable for leadership tasks, because they would think first and then act in order to avoid unnecessary effort. That can't be wrong.
I found out about Helene Fischer from my wife, she had probably been in the business for a while by then. So you see, even with a certain amount of media abstinence, in the end you get the really important news at some point.
Chapeau to the writer!
I see myself in the column. We are constantly surrounded by some kind of entertainment, some kind of background noise that distracts us, lulls us, numbs us, accelerates us. The media sensory overload, even if we no longer even notice it, is getting to us. We hang out on social networks, watch far too much TV, are always being bombarded in some way, satisfy our unconscious addiction to adrenaline and cortisol. Take a digital break from time to time and simply relax in nature.