How to Block All Disturbing Stories on Your Social Networks
On Saturdays and Sundays, I don’t watch any media, social or otherwise. Good days! It’s like a spa treatment for the brain. But unfortunately my brain is addicted to social media, so on Monday I snap my finger, swipe my finger across the screen and go crazy with every terrifying information that hits the transom. Wouldn’t it be nice if there was a way to keep up to date with family and friends and at least a minimum of news without being forced to see all the terrible things that Facebook sidebar throws in your face?
Well, there is. It’s called Sadblock , a browser extension that will hide all the sad and disturbing stories in your news feed. It’s kind of a version of soma, an opiate from Brave New World in the digital age, that makes people forget they are living under a repressive regime.
I’ve tried Sadblock for a week for Facebook and Twitter (rarely look at Reddit). Here’s how I would rate him for blocking all disturbing stories on my news feed: solid B.
For starters, you can choose which blocks you want to include: there is a sadblock for all occasions. There are also blocks for anything political, anything about climate change or certain celebrities, and a block for certain trigger words, although I don’t know what those trigger words were. You hit “enable” on each of them, and then when you’re on Facebook or Twitter, you can watch Sadblock’s ticker count down the stories it hides from you. Great, right? So why isn’t it a five?
Well, stories really flash on your screen for a moment , sending tiny pricks of news in your eyes: tax reform. Roy Moore. Ivanka. You very briefly see these stories of getting gobbled up by Sadblock, bringing to mind a magician who doesn’t quite pull the curtain fast enough, revealing a slightly drunken magician’s assistant who thought she was on hiatus. Thus, the user is actively reminded that there are horror stories and that Sadblock is essentially a high-tech way to stick his fingers in his ears.
But, I mean, it doesn’t seem like the stories that come to your mind are being solved by some legitimate, orderly system anyway. Sadblock does diminish what you see, which causes anxiety, but it also inexplicably deletes harmless messages and leaves a lot of unpleasant ones – a funny friend post in annoying corporate jargon was rejected, but GoFundMe for a kid with a terminal illness was obviously not considered a sad block. -capable. I saw the news about a guy who died because he couldn’t afford insulin , the heartbreaking story of a man with Alzheimer’s and his loyal cat , and a lot of Nazis that the New York Times covered . But Sadblock hid tweets from me about my own stories, tweets in which I was tagged, presumably because they were about sexual harassment . On the other hand, I saw a lot more recipes than usual and a tale of architectural oddities like whispering walls .
So Sadblock works, but it’s not a complete blackout. The news is still horrible on a regular basis, and to be honest, if people die because they can’t get insulin or parents can’t access health care for their sick children, I really want to know. Tell me stories? Certainly. They also make me angry, and I don’t want to block the anger . Anger is motivating. If you block whatever bothers you, you can eat your dose of catfish and take a nap. Until then, I’ll stick with blackouts on weekends and breakdowns on Mondays.