How to Cope with Online Nonsense

Hyacinths and the sweet scents of spring. Google said they are a symbol of jealousy, but then it suggested power, peace, happiness, and pride, until it was all nonsense. The internet keeps spewing stuff out, but there are ways to avoid being overwhelmed.

Blue Hyacinths

In just one hour I considered a woman who lived to the age of 122 and only stopped smoking when she was 117, why pockets are a feminist issue and where to buy chickens. I spotted a gadget to remove cat hair, a house on wheels going through San Francisco and several cats managing to raise puppies successfully.

At the same time, it was nerve-wracking wondering what Harry and Megan might say, whether chicken jealousy is a thing, why the Brazilian variant is spreading and whether the dreadful problems with missing deliveries and dog mess in this village, will ever cease.

Luckily, everybody on social media is having a wonderful life, apart from the angry ones who are too busy signing petitions and picking fights.

It is a lot to deal with but some things are true.

Watch out for adverts

Be savvy and don’t click on the first thing that pops up. The ‘Pillow that will change my life’ has been stalking me for over a year, but I know better than to spend £70 on pillows that make wild promises. Check your facts, check your needs, follow gut instinct and maybe click on the second thing. This week Instagram said I need a lint scraper and it was right. For just £16 I have this.

Cat looking at a lint scraper and a pile of cat hair

If you have hours to spare and need to collect cat hairs into one tidy pile, get one of these.  It is more life-changing than a pillow could ever be.

It is useful for shopping

It is easy to compare prices and weigh up the odds. Especially, if you know what you want, like a new chicken. The following information was just a few clicks away.

Rescue Chickens are free.  Just bring them home and let them get on with being chickens. On the downside, they are past the peak point of lay, so will not pay for their keep in eggs, and they all look the same as each other.

Rescue Chickens

Chickens from a poultry supplier cost a lot, anything from £20 each. But they are young enough to pay you back with eggs, and you get to choose the colour.

Chickens in different colours
An example of the choice of colours available in a poultry farm
You can do research. No question is too stupid.

Even; Do chickens suffer jealousy?  Yes. Stick a new chicken in with the rest and all hell will break loose. You will have to buy a separate pen for hundreds of pounds so that makes googling ‘where to buy chickens’ a waste of time. I will wait for the current chickens to move on before rocking that boat.

Social media twists reality

For example; Pooh has invited Piglet for breakfast, so he pops out to get honey and bumps into Rabbit. They walk along together and it takes longer than Pooh thought it would because Rabbit has Things to Say. Piglet gets to Pooh’s house and is unsettled because Pooh is out. Imagine how Piglet feels later when he sees Rabbit’s Facebook page with a photo of  Rabbit and Pooh, deep in conversation, with a sickly caption saying ‘walking with friends is never a wasted walk’. That is how it works.

Pick your fights carefully

The online village forum is useful, but it is too easy to spend hours enjoying the arguments. Insults fly over anything, from badly parked cars to whether somebody complaining about party noise is a killjoy, but the main topic is always dog mess. There is so much about bad dogs on there.*

Reading rows and NOT JOINING IN ESPECIALLY IF YOU ARE DRUNKEN is a great way to realise how Zen you are, but it takes time.  If you are reading 120 comments a day about dog mess, you are not being selective enough.

*The real villains are the cats, they mess everywhere and kill birds at the same time but it’s rarely mentioned. Maybe they are controlling the internet in ways we don’t understand.

It never stops

It is funny when someone turns into a cat on Zoom, amazing travelling across Mars, terrifying diagnosing your own ailments and exhausting reading news. Especially the news, because it has to be bad to be interesting. This week’s motto from Yoga with Leah sums that one up.

‘If today was a good day, it was a good day.  If it was a bad day it will be a good story.’

It is compulsive and addictive, so you can choose to overwhelm yourself or step outside and check up on spring.

Those hyacinths. Each one was a Christmas gift so we now have years and years of Christmas sprinkled all over the garden.

Bright pink hyacinth

So clever how they come up and then go back underground again. I must google how they do it.

Footnote

Last summer a baby pigeon went missing from the nest in the grapevine. Winter is the time to cut grapevine back so I did. I think I just found it.

remains of a baby pigeon

This picture won’t go up on social media. That would be weird. But it is interesting and real, which is more than a lot of stuff you find online.

7 thoughts on “How to Cope with Online Nonsense”

  1. Thanks Jo, an amusing tonic as always. Lovely to see your hyacinths, I’m missing mine. Chuffed you’re thrilled with your lint-scraper, however… both Camille & Jules had chronic problems vastly improved by ergonomic pillows, (neck pain & migraines). Just sayin’…😂

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