Consuming the News, a.k.a. Guzzling the Limbic Cocktail

What if You Could Simply Ignore the Never-ending News Cycle?

About a decade ago I decided to opt out of about 80–90 percent of the news coverage I had previously consumed. I remain largely disconnected. I pay attention to the weather, such as the disastrous Hurricane Helene, and a handful of pet issues. But for my own sanity I intentionally ignore most everything else.

Sometimes the news still impinges. I discover dustups and scandals involving people I had no prior knowledge of. Don’t know, don’t care. The world keeps turning whether I engage or not. It’s as if my awareness, opinions, and involvement don’t count for much. Imagine that! Huge relief, really.

I’ve been writing and publishing since the late ’90s, and I’d say participating in public discourse had given me an overweighted sense of the value of my ideas and rhetorical contribution. The disengagement has proven healthy.

When I reflect about the choice, I think: It was impossible for people to obsess about news and opinion to this level anytime before the last few decades, especially before blogs and then social media; moreover, very few of the obsessed seem to be concerned that chugging round after round of this limbic cocktail of dread and disgust might be bad for our mental health—maybe even our souls.

Ready to down another? Cartoon by ChatGPT.

As far as I can see, there are three stages to this development.

Stage 1: Cable News

I still remember watching CNN’s Headline News, the origin of the 24-hour news cycle, in the 1980s. But the network churned through the same stories over and over, so it was easy to turn off. Producers eventually recognized they needed more than facts and stories to keep it interesting. They needed analysis. So cable news soon gave us interview segments. “We’ve heard about X, now tell us what you think about X.”

At the same time Crossfire with feisty Michael Kinsley and blunt Pat Buchanan sought to reincarnate the Buckley-Vidal moment on a daily basis. It was good television, but then the model migrated to all those analysts. “We’ve heard about X, now tell us what you two think about X. [Snarl, jab, chuckle.]”

For the producers and their managers “news” became primarily a means of selling human attention to advertisers. And the only way to do it was more fear-mongering, speculation, and argument, colored with bravado, triumphalism, and derision. Bill O’Reilly and Rachel Maddow both come to mind, but Glenn Beck and Tucker Carlson became the apotheosis of the form.

For the viewers, “news” was a way to stay engaged, in-the-know, and current about issues that matter (and dozens more than only seemed to). But they were also getting played by basic storytelling gimmicks (“more on X in the next hour”), purposeful anxiety-inducement, and tribalism, making the whole package irresistible. Each segment was a gulp of the limbic cocktail.

Stage 2: Talk Radio

Soon talk radio began stoking the fires during people’s increasingly long commutes. The aggrieved right wing, mostly left behind by mainstream media, adopted A.M. radio with a vengeance. I listened to Christine Craft (on the left) and Rush Limbaugh (on the right) in the ’80s when they were back to back on local Sacramento, California, radio. Moderate Tom Sullivan was in the schedule somewhere. But those were the early days.

Syndication came into play in 1988 and soon Limbaugh was everywhere and building a nationwide audience. Instead of the Buckley-Vidal model, it was Limbaugh holding forth on everything for three solid hours a day. The way to keep listeners was to amplify the ire, the humor, and the outrage (remember “caller abortions”?).

The new model worked, and soon we had regional imitators everywhere, along with nationally syndicated shows like Ken “The Black Avenger” Hamblin and Michael Savage, whom I published at Thomas Nelson. That’s exactly how Beck and Sean Hannity got started. With our ears pressed to the speakers, the mixologists passed us another glass of the strong stuff.

Stage 3: Social Media

While this development was getting fully out of hand, another was soon to join it: the social web. First, there were the message boards, me-zines, and blogs with their communities of readers and commenters (I had a few of those, starting in 1997). Then came social media proper: Facebook, Twitter, and the rest.

These are fresh enough in people’s mind they don’t require much comment. Carlson, whose show has migrated from cable to Twitter/X, closes the loop. But these three stages: 24-hour cable news, talk radio, and social media fundamentally changed the way people not only consume news; they also changed the way people conceive news.

News is now imagined as a thoroughly participatory event that supposedly requires the full engagement of every concerned person. News isn’t complete unless we engage constantly: listening, viewing, commenting, posting. It’s not a periodic update; it’s a full-time project. We don’t just consume news; news consumes us.

The kicker is that we take on this full-time project for free. Worse, we pay with our time, attention, cognitive, emotional, and creative energies. The only way such an all-consuming ask is even possible is that we fail to realize we’re slurping the limbic cocktail. We’re basically annoyed, anxious, angry, or afraid all day long. We’re being played at our most primitive level. Fight, flight, or post! Preferably, all three!

Escape and Escapism

Me? Not anymore, at least not usually. Nowadays I listen to one newsy podcast a week (bonus points if you can guess which) but otherwise limit my consumption. I’ve got novels to read, a book to write, kids to cherish, a wife to love, a job to do, two dogs to feed, and friends to see. Bartender, I’ve long since had enough.

I sometimes think of this tweet from Nikita Gill, who has since shuttered her account:

The news: everything is bad.

Poets: okay, but what if everything is bad and we still fall in love with the moon and learn something from the flowers.

Some of you will say this is escapism. But what if it’s the other way around? How much of real life are we ignoring—or avoiding—by refusing to step away from the bar?

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