A few months ago I decided to never go on the website of Dutch (tabloid) newspaper De Telegraaf again. It's not just because of headlines such as 'Monique Smit buys puppy!!' (Monique Smit is the little sister of a Dutch reasonable famous singer, Jan Smit), it's also because of their political preferences and even more so of the political prefereneces of their readers who have nothing better to do than comment on every article published blaming the left-parties. Who are also blamed for the weather and I wish I was making that up. Fair does it though that the middle-of-the-road and right from it person deserves their own newspaper, after all the so-called left-ones got the more serious paper De Volkskrant, so I'm not dissing the excistance of De Telegraaf per-sé, but reading it and especially the reactions from their readers made me physically ill because I got so angry about them. Ever since I decided to avoid De Telegraaf I'm doing much better. Reading an online newspaper can be a force of habit, it was hard at first, but I don't miss it at all. Do I miss out on news? No I don't. Do I still know which celebraties are falling out to each other? I do. Trending topics do that. My colleagues tell me that. So I'm totally up to date with things I don't need to know. And I'm much healthier.
After this Big Success I'm now starting my next website-ban. NME.com. I don't get ill going on there but do I really need to read about all the hypes I am NOT interested in? How often did I fall for the trick that this band is The New Shit and in reality they were just as shit as the previous New Shit hailed the previous week? Sure, loads of people are into that and that's fine, for them the NME is heaven but why on Earth did I get into this force of habit? Boredom? That I still want to know 'what's going on'? To annoy myself? To question humanity why hyped band so and so gets the praise and a fairly good band from the North West doesn't?
No more. No more NME.com for me. Will I miss out? No, because thanks to the people I follow on twitter and the trending topics I will get the news. Of releases I'm not interested in. Fair does it of course, because for the so-called snobby people like me there's a source as well and that's the ... well, I still haven't found it yet but I'm sure there is (maybe it's the city of Portland instead of an online magazine). I mean, I still find great music on the web, I think I know what I need to know (and sometimes more than I bargained for) about the musicians I like, really, do I depend on a online website I only shake my head about? I'm breaking another habit. And soon I will be a good person again.
