I recently took out a membership with a federal political party. For the sake of this conversation, the specific party isn't important. My thought was that with all of the wild stuff happening in the United States right now, being actively involved in democracy is pretty important, right now and having a party membership would be a good start to getting into the process.
A coworker with whom I talk politics had invited me to join, so there was a person-to-person, grassroots element to it. It felt like a good first step.
But it went immediately south. Because within 20 minutes of sending in my membership form, the emails started - and they haven't stopped. I receive something like 5-10 emails per day from the party and related members. It's so much. I am not reading any of it because there's no filter. And it's occurred to me that this may be exactly why I haven't been involved in politics/democracy directly. There's just too much noise.
I'm kind of sickly diligent about unsubscribing to emails I don't want. Everything you buy online is followed by a daily "buy more" email, and it's easy for me to turn that off. But in this case, if I turn off those emails, then they just have my $25, and I'm not further along the path.
I've mentioned before how Hank Green compares our new discovery of social media to the upheaval that happened after the launch of the printing press. I think this is a symptom of the same problem. We've all been given this infinite broadcast capacity, but we've never yet figured out how to make it palatable, or even manageable for a consumer who is not infinite.
I think it's part of why I've focused so hard on the live part of my music lately. At least there I'm talking and dealing with people in person. I'm resistant to starting a mailing list or even recording an album because I feel like it's destined to just be dumped into the noise. At a venue, I have your attention.
This is a real and new problem we could be applying AI to. Rather than training it to do the jobs that people do well, maybe it could do this job that people can't do. Sort through all of this communication and give me the parts that are important. Deliver me the bad news at the right time. Delete 4 out of 5 emails that come in from that place where I bought new shoes.
And here I am with a blog, just adding more noise to the ocean. Oh well. At least it's just one person who's being overwhelmed.
