When Information Is Vomited at You

Focus, please! What matters most — in life and in an election?

“Halloween 2024 in Cambridge, Mass.” © Martha Nichols

Last night, on Halloween, I had an unexpected moment of clarity. My husband and I strolled around our Cambridge neighborhood, especially the “Halloween Street” that gets closed to through traffic, recalling all the past years there with our son. This year, we saw kids dressed as peacocks and safety cones, witches and fairy wings lit by LEDs, election-themed jack-o-lanterns, theater smoke and plastic skeletons.

One of the skeletons on display, animated with gouts of water from its skull, kept vomiting into a trash can. Goofy as that was, all my competing emotions clicked. A cage of empty bones that throws up a real mess. Costumed fakery, smiling villains. So many of the devils who truly worry me seem dead to other people, unworried about who they hurt or disgust.

The upcoming U.S. election is an obvious culprit for my unease, yet I don’t want to reduce this to a headline. I’ve been avoiding frenzied headlines about election anxiety or resignation or nobody cares or “the mood.”¹ Instead, I’m trying meditation, deep breathing, and — admittedly, chattering affirmations to myself during sleepless nights — in order to find my focus.

I’m not an undecided voter: I’m voting for Kamala Harris. But I’ve realized there’s something deeper going on for me and maybe for you as well. Digital media has trained me to take in information by skimming and multi-tasking. I think that’s shaped other jackrabbit behavior, too. I leap from one thing to another. I make to-do lists. Those lists sprout branches of more things to do and take in. And each decision point means another split into more decisions, until I’ve got too many things flying around internally to figure out what I really want. Talk about the invisible forest.

In the title essay of her 2022 book Run Towards the Danger, filmmaker Sarah Polley describes recovering from a longterm concussion:

“When you have a brain injury, you have a unique opportunity to witness how much processing your brain is normally able to do with unnoticed effort. So many small decisions, observations, and conclusions are reached in a twenty-second period. It is a marvelous thing, the brain, when it works.”

When it works. Polley’s book, a memoir of connected essays, is one of my favorites at the moment. It’s helped me to think about my own recent physical travails.² But I’m also reminded that the brain can be impaired for many reasons. In our digital lives, overstimulation and vomited information from the void is the norm; it could very well be impacting our ability to decide.³ There are dangers we should acknowledge, but focusing is what matters, not just running into a constant stream of crud.

In fact, I do know what I want. Yet focus is hard, especially if I know what the hard thing is to do but there are endless distractions to go rabbiting after. Even harder: conveying my focus and why it matters to other people, describing the forest. It’s why I’m angry at the media twig-tossing over the election, regardless of political bias (I’m looking at you, New York Times). I’m also angry at myself, a lousy position to be in and one I find little solace for online. I understand the collective exhaustion expressed by voters, even those of us who care deeply about what happens.

I keep noticing how most people in my orbit spin all sorts of unfocused ideas or thoughts. My friends, my family, my students, myself. I’ve personally become more irritated about having to decide what we have for dinner or which board game to play tonight or where to go for a walk or what we should read in a book group together.

Don’t make me decide anything else.

I’m exhausted by the pressure to make decisions based on shifting information, of wanting a mythical parent to cradle me on their lap and tell me it will be all right. I’m safe. I don’t have to decide. Maybe it’s just me right now, after dealing with various tests and doctors and a messed-up back that will require more decisions down the line. But the election heightens my personal anxieties, everyone raining down judgment like acid drops masquerading as confetti.

Let me say it again: focus is hard. Political campaigns make choices about the best focus for a given set of voters or the nation in general, but they pivot every day and not for the greater good. First we’re talking about immigration, then families having more children, then I.V.F., then democracy vs. fascism, then climate change, then tariffs, then unions, then “woke” universities and trans rights — and so on.

The resemblance to bullet lists from ChatGPT doesn’t thrill me. I’ll return to climate change — hint: that’s my focus — because it’s often threaded into the list as if it’s just another debating point among coconuts and single cat ladies. While I’ve come to respect the sophistication of generative AI, the bots tend to spout long lists of options, the idea being we humans do the choosing.

No problem, in theory. A recent test I did with ChatGPT came up with seven main areas of concern for the U.S. electorate, far more organized than my list above, and rank-ordered with “The Economy” as #1. It identified the Pew Research Center along with the Brookings Institution as main sources. When I asked which issue U.S. voters should focus on, I received a reasonable response:

ChatGPT: “One issue that U.S. voters might consider focusing on is economic stability. The economy underpins so many other concerns, such as healthcare, housing, education, and national security. Inflation, job opportunities, wages, and the cost of living directly affect the day-to-day lives of nearly every voter.”

All good, hard to argue with, except … what does that mean? The bot is basing it on a survey and what political experts of various political leanings talk about in abstract terms rather than the lived experience of an individual voter or group of voters. How do any of us process “economic stability”? What does that feel like? What does it make you worry about? Have you gone hungry? Have you lost your house in a hurricane or wildfire? Do you have an elderly relative who needs 24/7 care? Are you ill yourself? Can you afford to go to college? Will you have a job next year?

At this point, I’m lucky enough not to worry about living paycheck to paycheck, elderly parents, or getting laid off. That doesn’t mean I haven’t in the past. When I think about focusing my thoughts and feelings, I want to make meaning of what I’ve experienced. That’s what helps me make decisions. Like most of us (not just writers), I tell stories. But when an onslaught of competing views and facts are spewed at me digitally from the equivalent of a plastic skeleton, I don’t know how to focus those stories. Or I do, but only after pushing myself to turn off the vomiting hose.

Seven major areas of concern for U.S. voters, everything from the economy to abortion rights to national security — yikes! That’s a lot to hold in mind. That’s decision overload, which leads to kneejerk blame or hatred or jokes.

When I asked ChatGPT about the most popular memes or trends in the 2024 election, at least two involve writing in fictional candidates as a protest or “canceling” out a family member’s vote. “These memes serve as both a reflection of public sentiment,” the bot summarized, “and a means for individuals to engage with the election in a lighthearted manner.” Sure, there’s the impulse to lash out at false piety, something I often have myself. And yet, the increasing fabrication and fictionalization of everything doesn’t seem like the road to robust civic discourse.

As a teacher, my gut tells me we’re losing our ability to focus and meaningfully decide anything. We don’t see it modeled in the never-ending scroll of news feeds or social media or texts or online searches, which all algorithmically direct the flow at you based on what you click. How do I decide with such a feedback loop, when doing the hard work of deciding, of focusing, of turning off the machine when I’ve had enough, doesn’t serve the monied interests that control digital platforms?

I have decided, though, and so can you. It’s why I’m running towards the danger of climate change, even if this post isn’t really focused — because if I allow the consequences of climate change in viscerally, the temptation to distract myself is immense. The danger is hard to talk about without descending into despair. But for those thinking of sitting out the election or casting a protest ballot (or writing in “Luke Skywalker”), for young voters especially, if you hold one thing in mind, it’s this.

During his first term, Donald Trump pulled the United States out of the Paris agreement, and he’s vowed to do so again. He’s called climate change a “scam.” Even if your hackles raise with the New York Times, this news organization has thoroughly documented the first Trump administration’s impact: “The Trump Administration Rolled Back More Than 100 Environmental Rules. Here’s the Full List.”⁴

So, don’t let plastic skeletons vomit all over your information space. I know there are many distractions and high emotions, and there’s no perfect choice in this election. There never is. But the potential devastating hit to climate-change and environmental regulation alone are worth your focus, whatever generation you are.

Keep your eyes on the prize. For inspiration, go back to the Civil Rights Movement, another journey of centuries far from over but worth lifting collective eyes to a larger cause. “Hold on, hold on” — and vote.

1. Among other sensible recent commentaries, I’ve taken the advice offered by this episode of Monica Guzman’s A Braver Way podcast: “Consumed by the News? How to Stay Sane in a Polarized Election.”

2. I wrote more about Polley’s experience in “My Theory of Everything.”

3. There’s a rich vein of research about the impact of information overload on decision-making. Two representative studies and a book: “Information Dimension, Information Overload, and Decision Quality” (Journal of Information Science, 1999); “The Influence of Task Interruption on Individual Decision Making: An Information Overload Perspective” (Decision Sciences, 2007); and Infoglut: How Too Much Information Is Changing the Way We Think and Know (Routledge, 2013). Even before the advent of social media and the current digital omnipresence, the authors of the 1999 study conclude:

“The implication for information suppliers is that more is not always better in the case of information dimension. In addition, even a moderate amount of increase in information dimension, e.g. an increase of information diversity from five to six, can hinder decision quality.”

4. This week, the NYT ran “What’s at Stake: Climate” at the top of its digital feed. I could complain too little, too late, but I’d rather focus your attention on the candidates’ starkly different positions: “A Pivotal Choice: Trump vs. Harris on Climate Change.”

And if you want to run towards climate predictions, consider Kim Stanley Robinson’s 2020 science-fiction opus The Ministry of the Future. I’m reading it as part of a “cli-fi” book club with

Claudia Befu

on her excellent Story Voyager stack. Thanks for your focus, Claudia.