Buy him a Google Glass. That'll fix everything.

Flounce!

"I think in tweets now."

Is a little more distressing than

"My hands start twitching if I’m away from my phone for more than 30 seconds. I can’t even take a pee now without getting “bored.”"

The latter is a part of today's society, but the former appears a sign that persons' communication skills are being actively stunted. I never really "pushed through" the Twitter way of doing things, my brain had a hard time dealing with the limitations and finding something interesting enough to post in such characters.

It didn't help that 99% of the posts in my feed were friends advertising their businesses or fluff like "Having drinks with the girls!"

I don't know how people online as part of their livelihood handle it, once they become widely read enough to attract the mothswarm of cranky shits out there. Anyone working for Grist like this fellow draws every climate change denier and corporate-polluter sockpuppet online.

Lindy West pulls every stripe of misogynist and fat-shamer. And every kind of bastard and dipshit runs to pester Dan.

Making a living making a difference online is tough. I respect those who honestly try, and hope my chiming in from the peanut galleries here and there doesn't make it too much worse on them.

The question has always been is there a colossal disconnect between 3D reality and 2D abstract infospace. If I complain, does anyone listen or more importantly does anyone care and even more importantly does it lead to change.

Given the sheer volume of rants there appears to be a almost no resultant action. The bi-modal communications of the Internet are gradually turning into TV-like feeds on Facebook.

In that sense, the typing and swiping part of it, only serves as an illusion of importance. Much like we felt the old remote was a magic wand that lets us control our artificial world.

To make it work better, there has to be acknowledgement. It seems like a human tragedy to have this much effort to communicate put out there only to have it left spinning its wheels inside interminable and discursive threads. The new avenues of power must be built upward from the Internet, it can no longer be an appendage to archaic systems.

Good for David. He does excellent work, but his candle burns bright. He knows the sustainability world inside and out, and seems to carry much of Grist on his shoulders. If taking a year off keeps him from burning out completely it's worth the wait.

I do miss the days of Gristmill, where much of the action went on in the comment stream. It was like Grist's version of Slog. Other than the burden of moderating said stream, this has to be easier on the writers than coming up with multiple interesting complete stories each day. Just have a comment and a link, and let crowdsourcing do the work. The overall quality is lower, but so is the effort (I imagine).

This is brief, but worth a look-see:

http://www.internetisshit.org/

It was written several years ago and I don't believe the internet has improved since then. It's just as true now as then.

The internet is created by humans and has all the best and worst of humanity for all to see. As uncomfortable as that makes us, it's eye-opening.

I'm with this guy-I'm getting exhausted writing a blog. Trolls, the uninformed, mostly great readers. But the blog is a beast that must be fed and readers want new content. And let's not forget - they also don't want to pay for it.