Please stop yelling at me

I open my email.

There are messages from facebook directing me to messages from friends so i click thru to my browser.
Scanning the long list of status updated on my homepage I note links to at least 3 interesting articles, blogs, videos. They look to be interesting/useful/ relevant-to-my-field information to click thru to; things I should read if I'm in this industry and want to keep up with current knowledge.

There are two email newsletters from recruitment companies who regularly send out editions seemingly full of interesting information, dozens of links to blogs, online articles, survey results.
I make a mental note, to go back and read all those articles later.

One email contains a link to that whitepaper I ordered. Must read that whitepaper sometime.
Must read those other 4 that I downloaded last week too. The one I just finished reading has 2 pages of references - all URLs for further research and info. I add those 2 pages to my list of links to look at later.

Next, I open my browser and see all the open tabs, lined up along to top, representing interesting things that I haven't yet read so have kept the tabs open to remind myself to look at them as soon as I have a spare moment.

I decide to create a spare moment and choose one tab. It's an interesting blog, with dozens of posts I've not yet read, which then link thru to further information, other sites. I follow one to a very cool site that might be of interest to colleagues. Email them the link. Groan. Now I've just added to THEIR email overload. So easy. A click and keystroke or two.

I follow a link in an FB status update to what looks to be an interesting post about Flash and iPad. Turns out to be one person's skewed and logic-free rant. The best reading was all the comments by readers, mostly tearing shreds off the author.

Another trail of clicking leads me to an online newspaper article purporting to be about a new global phenomenon/trend –– based entirely on anecdotes about 3 of the author's friends.

. . . . .

It's just too friggin' easy for someone to have an opinion about something and to stick it up on the web, then put a link to it in their mail out/social network feed and make us think we all absolutely have to read it. Because The barriers to entry that somewhat limit book and press publication, don't exist here on the interwebs. You want to publish something, all you need is internet access.

And people like me feel inadequate because we can't possibly read it all. I, and several people I know*, are email phobic now. The list of unread emails, that scrolls for pages, is a nagging statement of how behind we are, how we have failed at keeping up. (*i don't speak for the whole population, only myself and those several friends)

Fact: There aren't enough hours in the day. And when I do try and create the hours and attempt to read it all, I soon see that it's just someone spouting their own often uninformed, unexpert opinion.
EXACTLY as I am doing now.
I could easily start a new blog entirely on this theme, selling it as THE place to go for expert commentary on all things digital. I could crap on about what I think about iPad (along with the billion others already at it), just as now I am crapping on about what I think about information overload.

And you don't even have to really create any of your own content. Posting links to other content is even easier. Spend enuf time online following the trails and you'll soon see the same stuff coming up again and again. So there's not only more rubbish info out there, there's more of the same, just repackaged and repackaged.

I feel like I'm at a party - a RAVE party in a huge warehouse crowded with friends, colleagues, acquaintances and mostly total strangers - and EVERYONE is yelling at me, to get my attention, to be heard.

I wish they'd all shut up.

And maybe you wish you'd read something more interesting/useful/relevant-to-your-field than this.