Context-free information feeds produce stupefying dread rather than understanding

Evidence

Spatial and temporal context both have to do with the neighboring entities around something that help define it. Context also helps establish the order of events. Obviously, the bits of information we’re assailed with on Twitter and Facebook feeds are missing both of these kinds of context. Scrolling through the feed, I can’t help but wonder: What am I supposed to think of all this? How am I supposed to think of all this? I imagine different parts of my brain lighting up in a pattern that doesn’t make sense, that forecloses any possible understanding. Many things in there seem important, but the sum total is nonsense, and it produces not understanding but a dull and stupefying dread. — Jenny Odell, How to Do Nothing, 542

Categorization

• SEED: The precision of naming what social media lacks (spatial/temporal neighbors and event-order) gives a concrete diagnostic vocabulary for why feeds feel meaningless.
• XREF: connects to: Unmanageable information flows produce a pathological collective panic — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk: The Collected and Unpublished…, 1496